An influential study suggesting hearing aid use in adults with hearing loss was linked with a reduced dementia risk has been retracted by an open-access Lancet journal after a data bungle was identified. 

In the paper published last April, researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Melbourne and Shandong University in China analysed data on some 438,000 middle-aged and older adults taken from the UK Biobank. 

Writing in The Lancet Public Health, they concluded that those with hearing loss but without hearing aids had a 42% increased risk for all-cause dementia compared with those without hearing loss. 

At the same time, participants with hearing loss and hearing aid use had no increased risk.