Objective: the aim was to investigate the potential association between hearing impairment and incident depressive symptoms. Methods: using a prospective community-based cohort study in France (the Paris Prospective Study III), participants aged 50-75 years were recruited between 2008 and 2012 and thereafter followed up every two years up to 2018. Hearing impairment, measured at study recruitment by audiometry testing, was defined as a pure tone average greater than 25 decibels in the better ear. Incident depressive symptoms, measured using the validated 13-item Questionnaire of Depression 2 nd version, was assessed during follow-up. Multivariate generalized estimating equations were used to compute odd ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: among 7591 participants free of depressive symptoms at baseline (mean age 59.8 years, 63% of men), 14.3% had hearing impairment. Over six years of follow-up, 479 subjects (6.3%) had incident depressive symptoms. The OR for incident depressive symptoms was 1.36 for subjects with baseline hearing impairment (95% CI 1.06 to 1.73). A pooled analysis of four published prospective studies yielded a multivariable relative risk of baseline hearing impairment for incident depressive symptoms of 1.29 (95%CI 1.09 to 1.53). Conclusions: in this community-based prospective cohort study of participants aged 50 to 75, baseline hearing impairment was associated with a 36% increased odd of incident depressive symptoms.

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