A new NIH study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (July, 2008), report that hearing loss is almost twice as common in adults with diabetes compared to those without the disease.  While a link has long been suspected this is the first to show a relationship even after accounting for other factors such as age, noise exposure, and occupation.

In the study of over 5,000 adult subjects, high frequency hearing loss was found in 54% of diabetics compared to only 32% without the disease.  Additionally, hearing loss was 20% more likely even in those adults with elevated blood glucose but not to the level of diabetes diagnosis.

The exact physiology remains under investigation but researchers suggest that diabetes leads to specific damage to hair cell and vascular structures inside the cochlea. Additional study continues to more clearly delineate incidence among type 1 and type 2 diabetes.  

Physicians  are encouraged to consider the higher incidence of hearing loss and refer appropriately for audiological management.  

Our audiologist, Scott Mills, Au.D., is available for audiological management of diabetic-related hearing loss. 

Patients who undergo radiation therapy for head and neck cancer experience more hearing loss and are more disabled by its effects, according to a study in the Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

Problem
Head and neck cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer worldwide and radiation therapy is a common treatment.  Researchers found the following:
•    Close to 100% of the radiation delivered may reach the structures of the auditory system.
•    72% of patients receiving head or neck radiation treatment have measureable, permanent hearing loss (compared to 48% in an age-matched control group).   
•    Severe to profound hearing loss was 7 times more likely in the radiation treatment group.  

Effects
Additionally, those with radiation-related hearing loss experience heightened loneliness, depression, anxiety, have fewer social activities, and are less able to process information about their environment.  
Researchers surmise “this indicates that, when present, hearing losses were substantially greater and more incapacitating after the radiotherapy,”

Solutions
The obvious effects on hearing and socialization from radiation treatment are largely ignored.  A few steps will help:
1.    All elderly patients undergoing radiotherapy should have a thorough hearing evaluation.  
2.    Appropriately fit hearing aids will allow 85% of these patients to experience significantly improved confidence and participation in life around them.  
3.    Families must be educated about the cumulative effects of age, cancer, treatment, and communication.

source
* Hearing Loss and Complaint in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer Treated With Radiotherapy  Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2010;136(11):1065-1069.

New research published in a recent edition of the American Journal of Audiology, a journal published by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), Rockville, Md, reported that cardiovascular health positively impacts hearing over time, particularly among older adults.

Growing older can contribute to decreased hearing acuity; however, age is only one of many factors that contribute to the decline. The study, conducted by ASHA member Kathleen Hutchinson, Rachael Baiduc, and Helaine Alessio, reports evidence that cardiovascular fitness has a protective role in hearing loss prevention. Other health and fitness determinants, body composition, blood pressure, and blood lipids displayed no significant relation to hearing sensitivity, whereas muscle strength was inversely related.

A common explanation of how cardiovascular fitness may influence hearing is through the effect on blood circulation, especially to the organs and muscles on the inner ear, in particular, the stria vascularis in the cochlea. Metabolism and blood flow are directly related to the vascular pattern of the cochlea.

The research findings appeared in the January 19 edition. The entire article can be read here.

[Source: ASHA]

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Monday, January 18th 2010

Australia is known for its beer, its bar-bies, kangaroos, koalas and lovers.

Lovers? Well, maybe that’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Australia but, according to a recent Australian report, the country is hot to trot thanks to advances in hearing aid technology. Yep, all that doving and cooing has to be heard to have the desired effect, and if you can’t hear it, well, you’re missing out on some fun – and maybe missing out on some love, as well.

How Hearing Aids Turn Your Sex Life Around

The news comes from an opinion poll conducted among 300 Australians who use hearing aids to address hearing loss of varying degrees. The numbers are pretty self-evident:

* More than 50% of respondents believe that hearing aids have improved their social lives. (That’s a good start. VERY good start.)

* 66% of those who took part in the poll revealed that their hearing aids helped them to better; more easily connect with family and friends.

* 70% of responders live with their partners so hearing aids make a good thing even better.

Hearing aids improve sex life

Treating hearing loss has impact on love life survey says

* One in 10 poll takers reported improvement in their sex lives. (Whoopie!)

* 84% reported easier communications with loved ones.

* 75% stated that their loved ones no longer had to shout to be heard (nothing like shouting “sweet nothings” at your sweetie to set the mood, eh?)

* Not a single respondent reported any negative effects of hearing aid use to their social activities.

The report, conducted by The Galaxy Research for Deafness Forum, makes it pretty clear that hearing aids have a dramatic impact on overall quality of life – and living life to the fullest.

Marriage and Hearing Loss

The two do NOT go together like a “horse and carriage.” In fact, when a family member experiences hearing loss it has an impact on all the other members of the family. It’s not just about you. It’s about the impact your hearing loss has on loved ones.

A British study clearly shows that hearing loss has a negative effect on even the happiest of marriages. It’s not a love thing. It’s an ear thing.

* 44% of British respondents report hearing loss had a negative impact on their marriages.

* 69% report that hearing loss made them less able to engage in family activities.

* 34% of those involved in the study report losing contact with friends.

* Almost half stated that hearing loss is the worst part of growing old.

The Emotional Impact of Hearing Loss

People with unaddressed hearing loss are less likely to engage in social activities and when they do, they enjoy them less.

So do other family members. Let’s face it, shouting to be heard kinda takes the fun out of having fun, don’t you think? But it goes deeper than just having fun.

Those who experience hearing loss grow more and more isolated, even from those with whom they live. In turn, this isolation leads to depression, anxiety and stress in the home – the one place where we should all feel at ease. But when a family member denies that s/he has experienced hearing loss (46% of us), there’s a ripple effect that impacts every member of the family, friends, co-workers and the people we meet and greet on the street – our neighbors.

Hearing Aid Technology to the Rescue

Hearing aids improve marriage

So, hearing loss can be a downer if left untreated and numerous studies back that up. Fortunately, you don’t have to live with hearing loss and neither does your family. Today’s hearing aid technology delivers features that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

Today’s hearing aids are digital computers designed to improve the quality of life and the quality of love in any home. Here’s how.

Hearing Comfort

Today’s hearing aids deliver a more natural sound. Many employ open ear technology to allow for the most natural hearing experience you can get.

No more compressed, processed, tinny sound. Today’s hearing aids deliver the full range of sounds, improving quality of life for you and everyone you know.

Wearing Comfort

Today, hearing aids come in a variety of styles, from completely-in-the-canal (CIC) to newly designed compact behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids that present a discrete profile.

You choose the type of hearing aid that delivers the most comfort to suit your hearing needs and your preferences.

Automated Convenience

No more fiddling. No manual scroll wheels to boost or lower the volume. Today’s ear computers are designed to be hassle-free, programmed to fit your hearing needs in a variety of listening settings.

Advanced features that were once only available in the most expensive hearing aids now come standard even at entry level pricing. For example, automatic feedback suppression comes standard (to stop whistling), directional microphones (to reduce background noise) and noise reduction to name a few. The most sophisticated hearing aids now actually “learn” what your listening preferences based on adjustments you make and consequently adapt overall settings to your liking. Hey, let the machine handle it. You got better things to think about.

Total Connectivity

Looking to stay connected to the wireless world? Today’s hearing aids have you covered. Many hearing aids are now available with Bluetooth streamers, meaning you can connect your hearing aids to wireless devices so output is streamed directly to your hearing aids for optimal sound quality and listening abilities.

Or you’re a landscaper who works up a sweat before lunch. No problem with today’s water and corrosion resistant hearing aids. Go ahead, work. Hard. You’ll hear just fine.

There are hearing aids to suit any occupation, any life style, and any love life. Yep, that’s right. Those hearing aids may just bring back the zip that’s been missing. Who knows, maybe she’s been dropping hints for the past two years.

You just couldn’t hear them.

So if not for you, then consider treating your hearing loss for your loved one and your love life. A guaranteed sound investment.

Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a class-action lawsuit seeking to hold Apple Inc responsible for possible hearing loss caused by using its popular iPod music player.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed a 2008 district court ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show that use of the iPod poses an unreasonable risk of noise-induced hearing loss.  It also found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to allege a violation of California’s unfair competition law.

Jeff Friedman, a Berkeley, California lawyer representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately return a call for comment. David Bernick, who represented Apple, had no immediate comment. An Apple spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Cupertino, California-based Apple has sold more than 220 million iPods since their 2001 launch. It provides a warning with each iPod that urges users to avoid hearing damage by setting the volume at safe levels.  The plaintiffs, Joseph Birdsong and Bruce Waggoner, had argued that the iPod ear buds are designed to be placed deep in the ear canal, which increases the danger of hearing damage.  They also said that iPods pose a danger because of their lack of volume meters or noise-isolating properties, despite being capable of producing sound as loud as 115 decibels.

The appeals court said the plaintiffs showed ways they believe iPods could be made safer, not that they were dangerous.  “The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use,” Senior Judge David Thompson wrote.  “At most, the plaintiffs plead a potential risk of hearing loss not to themselves, but to other unidentified iPod users,” he wrote.

The plaintiffs had sought money damages, and to require Apple to improve safety and disclosures, provide better headphones, and test iPod users for hearing loss.

The case is Birdsong et al. v. Apple Inc. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 08-18841.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

[Source: Reuters]

LONDON, Dec. 29, 2009 (Reuters) — Individually designed music therapy may help reduce noise levels in people suffering from tinnitus, or ear ringing, German scientists said on Monday.

The researchers designed musical treatments adapted to the musical tastes of patients with ear-ringing and then stripped out sound frequencies that matched the individual’s tinnitus frequency.

After a year of listening to these “notched” musical therapies, patients reported a distinct decrease in the loudness of ringing compared with those who had listened to non-tailored placebo music, the researchers wrote in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

Tinnitus is a common hearing problem in industrialized countries and the ear-ringing can be loud enough to harm quality of life in between one and three percent of the general population, the researchers said.

A European Union (EU) health panel raised the alarm in January about the potential hearing damage caused by young people playing their MP3 players too loud.

The EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks warned that listening to personal music devices at high volume for long periods could cause hearing loss and tinnitus, and their warning prompted the European Commission to issue new safe volume standards for MP3 players.

The German researchers said the precise cause of tinnitus is not known, but the auditory cortex—the region of the brain that processes sound—is often distorted in those who have it.

Christo Pantev of the Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis at Westfalian Wilhelms-University, Germany, who led the study, said his findings on targeted listening suggested that tinnitus volume could be “significantly diminished by an enjoyable, low-cost, custom tailored notched music treatment.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland)

Copyright Reuters 2008

[Source: NewsDaily]

Sonitus Medical Inc, San Mateo, Calif, a privately held medical device company, reports the development of its SoundBite hearing system, a nonsurgical and removable hearing solution that the company says is designed to imperceptibly transmit sound via the teeth.

Relying on the principle of bone conduction, the hearing and communication platform is initially intended as a simple and noninvasive treatment for hearing disorders such as single-sided deafness and tinnitus.

Nearly invisible when worn, the SoundBite system consists of an easy-to-insert and remove ITM (in-the-mouth) hearing device—custom made to fit around either the upper left or right back teeth—and a small microphone unit worn behind the ear. No modifications to the teeth are required, says the company.

This system is currently for investigational use only with clinical trials now under way intended to support an initial filing for FDA 510(k) clearance to treat single-sided deafness. Intended future indications include conductive and mixed hearing loss.

Children who have cochlear implants (CI) rank their quality of life (QOL) equal to their normally hearing (NH) peers, indicates new research in the February 2010 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

A cochlear implant is an electronic device that restores partial hearing to the deaf. It is surgically implanted in the inner ear and activated by a device worn outside the ear. Unlike a hearing aid, it does not make sound louder or clearer. Instead, the device bypasses damaged parts of the auditory system and directly stimulates the hearing nerve, allowing deaf or severely hard of hearing individuals to receive sound. The National Institutes of Health estimate that as many as 59,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants, with roughly half of those in the pediatric population.

Prior research has indicated that deaf children feel less socially accepted, experience more difficulty in making friends, and demonstrate greater adjustment problems than their hearing peers. The subsequent success of the multichannel CI devices that improve speech perception and language development led researchers to look beyond speech and language performance to questions of psychosocial behaviors and adjustment.

This cross-sectional study of 88 families with CI children from 16 US states used a generic QOL questionnaire. The group was then divided by age of the child when they filled out the questionnaire: an 8- to 11-year-old group and a 12- to 16-year-old group. Both parents and children were asked to fill out the QOL questionnaire, with the parents assessing their child. The study group was then compared to a control group of 1,501 NH children in 4^th & 8th grades.

Results of the questionnaire revealed that overall QOL did not differ between CI and NH groups. However, examination of individual subscales revealed that 8- to 11-year-old CI children rate their QOL with family less positively than their NH peers. Younger CI recipients rated overall QOL more positively than the older 12- to 16-year-old CI group. However, the authors point out that this could be a reflection of standard adolescent behavior. Overall QOL showed a significant inverse association with age at implantation, and a significant positive correlation with duration of CI use in the 12- to 16-year-old group.

The authors point out that even though prior studies have assessed QOL in CI children, this study adds additional perspective to the literature, as it combines assessments by the actual CI recipients and parents, and it maps the results in context with NH children. In addition to findings about how CI children rank their QOL, the research reveals that parents proved to be reliable reporters for their children in areas where they could observe and participate.

The authors write, “For profoundly deaf children who regularly use a cochlear implant, feelings about life overall are no better or worse than their hearing peers. These findings indicate that cochlear implantation has a positive effect on certain psycho-social domains.”

The study’s authors are Betty Loy, AuD, Andrea D. Warner-Czyz, PhD, Liyue Tong, MS, Emily A. Tobey, PhD, and Peter S. Roland, MD.

[Source: American Academy of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery]

A team of researchers from the University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore, say they have isolated an independent processing channel of synapses inside the brain’s auditory cortex that deals specifically with shutting off sound processing at appropriate times. Such regulation is vital for hearing and for understanding speech.

The discovery, detailed in the February 11 issue of the journal Neuron, goes against a long-held assumption that the signaling of a sound’s appearance and its subsequent disappearance are both handled by the same pathway. The new finding, which supports an emerging theory that a separate set of synapses is responsible, could lead to new, distinctly targeted therapies such as improved hearing devices, said Michael Wehr, a professor of psychology and member of the UO Institute of Neuroscience, in a statement.

“It looks like there is a whole separate channel that goes all the way from the ear up to the brain that is specialized to process sound offsets,” Wehr said. The two channels finally come together in a brain region called the auditory cortex, situated in the temporal lobe.

To do the research, Wehr and two UO undergraduate students—lead author Ben Scholl, now a graduate student at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and Xiang Gao—monitored the activity of neurons and their connecting synapses as rats were exposed to millisecond bursts of tones, looking at the responses to both the start and end of a sound. They tested varying lengths and frequencies of sounds in a series of experiments.

It became clear, the researchers found, that one set of synapses responded “very strongly at the onset of sounds,” but a different set of synapses responded to the sudden disappearance of sounds. There was no overlap of the two responding sets,” the researchers noted. The end of one sound did not affect the response to a new sound, thus reinforcing the idea of separate processing channels.

The UO team also noted that responses to the end of a sound involved different frequency tuning, duration, and amplitude than those involved in processing the start of a sound, findings that agree with a trend cited in at least three other studies in the last decade.

“Being able to perceive when sound stops is very important for speech processing,” Wehr said. “One of the really hard problems in speech is finding the boundaries between the different parts of words. It is really not well understood how the brain does that.”

As an example, he noted the difficulty some people have when they are at a noisy cocktail party and are trying to follow one conversation amid competing background noises. “We think that we’ve discovered brain mechanisms that are important in finding the necessary boundaries between words that help to allow for successful speech recognition and hearing,” he said.

The research—funded in part by the UO’s Robert and Beverly Lewis Center for Neuroimaging Fund—aims to provide a general understanding of how areas of the brain function. The new findings, Wehr said, could also prove useful in working with children who have deficits in speech and learning, as well as in the design of hearing aids and cochlear implants. He also noted that people with dyslexia have problems defining the boundaries of sounds in speech, and tapping these processing areas in therapy could boost reading skills.

[Source: University of Oregon]