Is type 1 diabetes mellitus a cause for subtle hearing loss in pediatric patients?

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of IDDM on the function of the auditory pathway from the cochlea to the auditory cortex in child patients. Totally, 140 ears of 70 children with IDDM and 60 ears of 30 age and gender-matched healthy controls were included in the study. The ages of patients and controls ranged from 4 to 14 years. Audiological assessment including pure-tone audiometry, otoacoustic emission testing (OAE) and auditory brainstem response testing (ABR) has been performed to all participants. There was no significant difference between the patients and controls regarding pure-tone thresholds on audiometry (p > 0.05). The latencies of waves I, III and V on ABR were not significantly different between the patients and controls (p > 0.05). The amplitudes on DPOAE testing obtained from both groups were not significantly different at the frequencies of 2,000 and 4,000 Hz (p > 0.05). However, the DPOAE amplitudes of the patients at 1,000 Hz were significantly lower than those of controls at the same frequency (p = 0.03). There was no difference between the patients who had chronic disease (>5 years) and healthy controls regarding pure-tone audiometry, ABR and DPOAE testing results (p > 0.05). In the light of the findings obtained with pure-tone audiometry, and OAE and ABR testing, it seems that auditory system is spared in children with IDDM at clinical level. Diabetes control and chronicity of the disease do not impact on the auditory system except for a subclinical involvement in the apical portion of the cochlea.

Cochlear, auditory brainstem responses in Type 1 diabetes: relationship with metabolic variables and diabetic complications

“…An association with glycaemic control could not be detected, in accordance with other studies . Oxidative stress, metabolic injury and glycaemic excursions may be independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease and play a pathogenetic role in ear disturbances.…”

“…Potentially, a cochleopathy may underlie such hearing dysfunction, because DPOAE intensity in our study was reduced at all frequencies, reaching statistical significance over the 2.8-4 kHz frequency range. Discrepancies in the range of significantly reduced frequencies in two recent studies [21,22] may be related to differences in the population studied (children and adolescents), patient stratification according to glycaemic control in those two studies, as well as patient numerosity.…”

An association of type 1 diabetes mellitus with auditory dysfunction: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…reviews, case reports, animal studies, not a case‐control association study, a study about type 2 DM); and 35 were left for detailed assessment of the full articles. After additional evaluation, 20 studies were further ruled out based on exclusion criteria, and 15 studies were eligible for data extraction. Among them, Abd El Dayem et al recruited 21 diabetes patients (disease duration < 2 years) and 32 diabetes patients (disease duration ≥ 2 years), respectively, to analyze changes in ABR in the one study.…”

“…The quality scores of all 15 of the included studies were above six points, ranging from six to eight points (Table ). Of those, only four studies demonstrated the incidence of hearing loss in type 1 diabetes and controls; five studies provided the mean values of the PTA thresholds for diabetes patients and control subjects at various frequencies (500–8,000 Hz); and eight studies showed the mean values of latency and interpeak latency time of waves I, III, and V, respectively, and the intervals between them for both diabetic and control subjects.…”

Early Indices of Reduced Cochlear Function in Young Adults with Type-1 Diabetes Revealed by DPOAE Fine Structure

“…Reduced amplitude in TEOAEs and DPOAEs in adults were reported by several studies (Di Nardo et al, 1998;Lisowska et al, 2001;Ottaviani et al, 2002) whereas one reported no difference without the presence of reduced NCV (Di Leo et al, 1997). Studies limited to children and teenagers with type-1 DM have demonstrated no significant differences in TEOAE, DPOAE, or SOAEs compared with matched controls (Namyslowski et al, 2001;Ugur et al, 2009), except for one study at one DPOAE frequency (ALDajani et al, 2015) and another that examined TEOAEs in children with elevated pure-tone thresholds (Abd El Dayem et al, 2014).…”