Is there auditory impairment in Parkinson's disease?

Abstract

Objective: to describe the audiological profile of a group of patients with Parkinson's disease and to investigate the association between hearing loss and the disease. Methods: 50 individuals with and 46 without Parkinson's disease underwent Pure Tone Audiometry, Otoacoustic Emissions by Distortion Product, and auditory processing tests. The results of the patients were compared to those obtained in individuals without the disease, according to clinical and biological variables. Results: in individuals with Parkinson's disease, 82% presented hearing loss, 53.5% alterations in Otoacoustic Emissions by Distortion Product, 78%, alterations in temporal processing, and 12%, changes in binaural integration. Individuals with the disease had a greater impairment in the recognition of duration patterns when compared to those without the disease, with a worse performance in men and in individuals aged between 42 and 65 years old and Hoehn and Yahr I and II stages. Conclusions: the profile found corresponds to descending sensorineural hearing loss and alteration in otoacoustic emissions, temporal ordering and noise gaps detection.Only losses in temporal order are associated with the disease, especially in men, individuals under the age of 65 and in the initial stage.

Future Perspectives on the Relevance of Auditory Markers in Prodromal Parkinson's Disease

“…In agreement with research in more advanced patients with PD, Lopes et al (20) found no alterations regarding dichotic listening in a divided attention paradigm in early stage PD. In their study, a subgroup of 34 patients with PD at H&Y stage I to II did not differ significantly from HCs regarding the percentage of correctly repeated digits.…”

“…Indeed, a high-frequency age-related hearing impairment has been shown in studies that used pure-tone audiometry to evaluate the hearing sensitivity of patients with PD and age-matched control participants (HCs). On the one hand, multiple studies have demonstrated the same sloping audiometric pattern in patients with PD compared to HCs, consistent with the presence of an age-related hearing loss ( 17 – 20 ). These studies did not find significant differences between patients with PD and HCs regarding pure-tone hearing thresholds.…”

“…Multiple studies have addressed dichotic listening in a divided attention paradigm in patients with PD. Overall, these studies did not find significant group differences between patients with PD and HCs (20,22,67,68). Only Richardson et al (69) reported that a substantial part of patients with PD demonstrated abnormal dichotic listening compared to normative values.…”

“…Hence, the presence of OAE decreases with increasing age, especially at higher frequencies. In patients with PD, the presence of TEOAE and DPOAE responses did not differ significantly from HCs (17,20). Additionally, for research purposes, the response amplitudes of OAEs can be used for group comparisons.…”

“…No significant differences were found between early stage patients with PD and age-matched HCs for the discrimination of pure tones differing either with respect to frequency or duration. In the study of Lopes et al (20), patients with PD were also divided into two subgroups regarding disease stage. As such, 34 patients with PD at H&Y stage I to II were included in the early stage PD group.…”