Ears, Eyes and Mind: The ‘SENSE-Cog Project’ to improve mental well-being for elderly Europeans with sensory impairment

Project Information

SENSE-Cog

Grant agreement ID: 668648

DOI

10.3030/668648

Project closed

EC signature date 9 December 2015

Start date 1 January 2016

End date 30 June 2022

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Health, demographic change and well-being

Total cost

€ 6 868 286,25

EU contribution

€ 6 541 591,25

Coordinated by

THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD, OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - SENSE-Cog (Ears, Eyes and Mind: The ‘SENSE-Cog Project’ to improve mental well-being for elderly Europeans with sensory impairment)

Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

With population ageing, cognitive, hearing and vision impairment are increasing in prevalence. These conditions frequently co-occur and are linked to negative outcomes including depression, poor cognitive function, social isolation, and reduced quality of life (QoL). SENSE-Cog’s aims are to: (1) understand the inter-relationship of sensory and cognitive impairments; (2) identify novel means of screening/detection for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes; and (3) translate this knowledge into clinical applications for the mental well-being of EU citizens.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work-Package 1: Exploration
Key outputs include a deeper understanding of the relationships between sensory loss, dementia and mental ill health in older adults, disseminated as a portfolio of published paper in high impact journals. Findings have been reported widely and supported further research and key high impact works, such as the Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention (Livingston et al., 2020), which highlighted the importance of mid-life hearing impairment as a potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia.

Work-Package 2: Assessment
Key outputs include: (1) Published papers on the availability of online screening tools for hearing, vision and cognition loss; (2) An online Toolkit for professionals with guidance about how to support people with dementia with concurrent hearing/vison loss; (3) an online screening tool, the e-checker, for self-screening of hearing, vision and cognitive loss; (4) validation of a commonly used cognitive screening tool, the MoCA for hearing and vision and validation of a functional assessment tool, the DemPAL for people with sensory impairment.

Work-Package 3: Intervention
Key outputs include: (1) Published papers on the development of the intervention and its field trial, which revealed positive results for people with dementia when hearing and vision is improved; (2) a completed large-scale randomized controlled trial of a Sensory Support Intervention for people living at home with hearing and/or vision loss, leading to international conference presentations and published papers (being completed); (3) international practice guidelines on best practice regarding hearing, vision and cognitive loss in people with dementia.

Work-Package 4: Valuation
Key results are: (1) A published review on quality-of-life tools used for dementia HE analyses; (2) models of the cost effectiveness of a hearing-vision intervention to support people at home with dementia and concurrent hearing and vision loss; (3) a published paper of an econometric analyses from the SHARE meta-dataset.

Work-Package 5: Participation, Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation
Key results include published papers on: (1) PPI in dementia scoping review; (2) Training of a PPI Research User Group; (3) Impact of involving a PPI Research User Group in a research program such as SENSE-Cog. The guidelines provided by (2) have supported the development of other new PPI groups related to dementia, such as the HRB-CTN Dementia Trials Ireland PPI group in Ireland and a PPI consultation group based in Athens, Greece.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Work-Package 1: Findings have been reported in several papers from multiple large-scale EU (& one US) include: (1) dual (hearing and vision combined) sensory loss poses a risk for depression and anxiety; (2) suicidal risk is greater in older people with hearing and/or vision loss; (3) hearing aids and cataract surgery may mitigate downward trajectories of cognitive aging; and (4) retinal changes may be an early biomarker of dementia. We have deepened understanding of the trajectory of cognitive decline in relation to sensory impairment, particularly in the very old population (over 90s) and influenced our understanding of hearing impairment as a potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia.

Work-Package 2: We are nearly completion for data collection for validation of widely used cognitive test (the MOCA) adapted for people with sensory impairment We completed a critical review of online cognitive assessment tools and are mid-way through validation of our on-line screening tool (the SENSE-Cog E-checker) in five EU countries. This work has bed into an on-line Toolkit for professional and lay stakeholders to obtain more information about the topic fostering the conversation and action around addressing concurrent hearing, vision and cognitive loss in older people.

Work-Package 3: We developed and field tested a new home-based psychosocial intervention to improve quality of life in people with dementia and sensory impairment, which was evaluated in a full randomised controlled trial in five countries and has now been completed, providing valuable data about the use and uptake of sensory devices (i.e. hearing aids) in people with dementia, the impact of supporting hearing and vision impairment in people with dementia at home, and how quality of life may/may not be influenced by the use of hearing aids or glasses in people with dementia.

Work-Package 4: Econometric analyses from the SHARE meta-dataset identified that cognitive and sensory impairments are associated with higher use of health care services, even after controlling for other major health conditions. Understanding the cost effectiveness of non-drug interventions to support people with dementia is critical to shape policy and practice to improve the lives of people with dementia.

Work-Package 5: We held public engagement events with >250 people, spreading the principles of ‘patient and public involvement’ (PPI) in the EU. We are evaluating methods to provide a gold standard for PPI in dementia. We have a publishable protocol training evaluation for our EU-wide Research User Groups (RUGS), contributing to the methodology of conduction PPI internationally in the dementia field.

Work-Package 6: The WP6 team has successfully delivered the Steering Committee Meetings and the Annual General Meetings, held in November 2021 as web conference and hybrid event in Athens, Greece in June 2022, and attended by all consortium partners.

Work-Package 7: We have undertaken Ethics’ Advisory Board reviews and gained approval for all work from our external ethics lead and submitted a detailed report to the European Commission for an ethics audit. Our report was favourably reviewed and no amendments were requested. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing ethics’ amendments to WP2 and WP3 have been needed. These have been favourably reviewed by our EAB and at project termination there were no outstanding ethical issues.

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