Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Adult men and women who have contracted the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) could experience hearing issues as a result of the pathogen, according to new research published Friday in the online edition of JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
Dr. Peter Torre III of San Diego State University and colleagues from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Georgetown University Medical Center explained that HIV-positive adults had poorer lower- and higher-frequency hearing than those who did not have the infection.
They recruited a total of 262 men (117 of whom were HIV positive) from the greater Baltimore-Washington DC site of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, and 134 women (105 of whom were HIV positive) from the Washington DC, site of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study. The men were 57 years old on average, while the average age of the women was nearly 48.
“Pure-tone air conduction thresholds were collected in a sound-treated room for each ear at frequencies from 250 through 8000 Hz. Linear mixed regression models tested the effect of HIV on hearing after adjustment for age, sex, race, and noise exposure history,” the authors wrote.
They tested low-frequency pure-tone average (LPTA) at 250, 500, 1000, and 2000 hertz, and high-frequency PTA (HPTA) at 3000, 4000, 6000, and 8000 hertz. Differential HIV effects for both LPTA and HPTA were also examined. Overall they found that both the HPTA and LPTA were significantly higher for HIV positive adults, meaning that their hearing was worse.
Specifically, they found that HPTA and LPTA “were significantly higher” in the HIV-positive participants, and that the findings held true in both the better and worse ears in each individual. The researchers wrote that they found “no significant associations between HIV disease variables or treatment variables and LPTA or HPTA” during the course of their research.
High-frequency hearing loss is consistent with accelerated aging, Dr. Torre and his colleagues explained. Low-frequency hearing loss in this age group is unexpected, however, and since some vowels and consonants have predominantly low-frequency acoustic energy, hearing issues at this frequency could impair communication skills in HIV positive men and women.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate” that people who have tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS “have poorer hearing across the frequency range after many other factors known to affect hearing have been controlled for,” the study authors concluded.
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