Patients with diabetes have a significantly higher prevalence of hearing impairment than patients without diabetes, according to a study to be published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

Study authors note that the increased risk of hearing loss is likely to be independent of the effect of aging or a noisy environment. Recently several studies have investigated the relationship between diabetes and hearing impairment, but their findings were inconsistent.

“The association of hearing impairment with diabetes is controversial” said Chika Horikawa, RD, MSc, ofNiigataUniversityinJapanand lead author of the study. “In our study, we found that persons with diabetes had more than two times higher prevalence of hearing impairment than those without diabetes.”

This study was a meta-analysis of 13 previous cross-sectional studies with a total of 20,194 participants. Hearing impairment was assessed by pure-tone audiometry that included at least 2 kHz of frequency range. The strength of the association between diabetes and prevalence of hearing impairment was not significantly influenced by whether participants were matched for age and gender, or whether participants chronically exposed to noisy environments were excluded.

“Our results propose that diabetic patients be screened for hearing impairment from earlier age compared with non-diabetics, from the viewpoint of prevention of several health problems such as depression and dementia caused by hearing impairment,” notes Horikawa.