ArticleRevista de saude publica2026
Hearing loss and postural balance performance in adults and the elderly in ELSA-Brazil.
Article in Revista de saude publica, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo investigate the association between hearing loss and postural balance in adults and the elderly participating in the Estudo Longitudinal da Saúde do Adulto (ELSA-Brazil - Longitudinal Study of Adult Health).
methodsCross-sectional study with data from the fourth wave (2020-2025) of ELSA-Brazil, in the center of São Paulo. Sociodemographic, clinical, and audiological variables were analyzed. Hearing loss was defined by the average of the tonal thresholds (> 25 dBHL) in different criteria: PTA (0.5 kHz-2kHz), speech-frequency PTA (0.5 kHz-4kHz), and high-frequency PTA (3 kHz-8kHz), considering the better and the worst hearing ear. Balance was assessed using the modified Romberg test, in four progressive conditions (eyes open on a firm surface, eyes closed on a firm surface, eyes open on a soft surface, and eyes closed on a soft surface), with a binary classification (pass/fail). The outcome was performance in the balance test.
resultsA total of 540 participants were assessed, mostly women, self-declared white, mean age of 63.1 years, mean Body Mass Index (BMI) of 28.4 kg/m2, with higher education and income between R$ 1,245.00 and R$ 3,319.00. The rate of balance failure was 13.3%. The prevalence of hearing loss ranged from 13.7% to 59.8%, depending on the criteria used. There was an association between hearing loss and worse performance in the balance test, especially for high-frequency PTA. In the logistic regression models, there was a significant association between the explanatory variable age and failure in the balance test. After excluding the age variable, there was an association for hearing loss, BMI, schooling, and income.
conclusionThere was an association between hearing loss and poorer balance performance. The highest proportion of failures was for the hearing loss criterion that included high frequencies. Age was the most relevant explanatory variable in balance test performance, in addition to hearing loss, schooling, income, and BMI, emphasizing the need for a multifactorial view of this function.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.