Contributing Determinants to Hearing Loss in Elderly Men and Women: Results from the Population-Based Rotterdam Study

Abstract

To contribute to a better understanding of the etiology in age-related hearing loss, we carried out a cross-sectional study of 3,315 participants (aged 52-99 years) in the Rotterdam Study, to analyze both low- and high-frequency hearing loss in men and women. Hearing thresholds with pure-tone audiometry were obtained, and other detailed information on a large number of possible determinants was collected. Hearing loss was associated with age, education, systolic blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, body mass index, smoking and alcohol consumption (inverse correlation). Remarkably, different associations were found for low- and high-frequency loss, as well as between men and women, suggesting that different mechanisms are involved in the etiology of age-related hearing loss.

Progression of Hearing Loss in the Aging Population: Repeated Auditory Measurements in the Rotterdam Study

“…We found a significant effect regardless of the correction for cardiovascular confounders. This association of type 2 diabetes [Akinpelu et al, 2014] and smoking [Dawes et al, 2014;Chang et al, 2016;Rigters et al, 2016] with the prevalence of hearing loss in older adults was shown before. Possible hypotheses on the underlying pathogenesis of diabetes or smoking and hearing loss could be microangiopathy of the stria vascularis [Fukushima et al, 2006], neuropathy or mitochondrial damage [Helzner and Contrera, 2016].…”

“…Worse hearing thresholds in the lower frequencies were associated with being female and worse hearing in the speech and higher frequencies was associated with being male. Former cross-sectional studies found that women have better high-frequency hearing and that men have better low-frequency hearing [Rigters et al, 2016]. This is possibly explained by the assumption that men are at higher risk of noise-induced hearing loss.…”

“…From approximately the fifth decade onwards, hearing thresholds and speech understanding in noise gradually decline. Multiple determinants are thought to influence the onset and severity of hearing loss in older adults, namely demographic factors such as age, sex and social economic status [Agrawal et al, 2008], medical factors such as cardiovascular disease, cognition, diabetes mellitus, cholesterol level and obesity [Gopinath et al, 2010;Helzner et al, 2011;Akinpelu et al, 2014;Taljaard et al, 2016;Dhanda and Taheri, 2017], lifestyle-related factors such as noise exposure, smoking and an inverse correlation for alcohol consumption [Agrawal et al, 2008;Dawes et al, 2014;Rigters et al, 2016;Lin et al, 2017] and genetic susceptibility [Hoffmann et al, 2016]. The rate of the progression of hearing loss varies widely among people of the same age [Gates and Mills, 2005].…”

Gender Differences in the Association between Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Hearing Threshold Shifts

“…Compared to never drinkers, some studies reported that the protective effect was only noted in current drinkers with MAC (a U-shaped association was presented between alcohol consumption and hearing impairment with no risk for AMAC and lower risk for MAC) 4, 21, 22, 24 , and other studies report that the protective effect was observed in current drinkers with all categories, even above average or higher levels 25, 26 . The results of the Japanese epidemiological cross-sectional study with 496 subjects by Itoh et al .…”

“…These studies appear to contradict one another; some of them noted a detrimental effect or positive association 19, 20 , some found a beneficial effect or negative association 4, 21–26 , and others observed no remarkable association 27–29 . Different study methods or purposes or different definitions of alcohol consumption might have been responsible for these inconsistent results.…”