SAN DIEGO—A meta-analysis of 11 studies has found a strong correlation between diabetes and hearing loss. A group of Japanese researchers reported that people with hearing loss are about 50% more likely to have diabetes than an otherwise comparable population with normal hearing. The scientists presented their findings on June 23 at the American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting in San Diego.
Hirohito Sone, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Nutritional Medicine at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, and his colleagues combined and summarized data involving 6725 people with hearing impairment. Defining hearing impairment by cut-off values of pure-tone thresholds measured at a frequency range that included 2000 Hz, the scientists found that among the hearing-impaired subjects, 15.9% (1069) had diabetes. However, among 21,734 people without hearing loss, 10.7% (2319) had diabetes. In all studies, the risk for hearing impairment associated with diabetes was consistently positive.
These findings provide further substantiation for a 2008 study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health study, which showed that adult diabetics were twice as likely as those without the disease to have hearing loss.
