CILcare | Making Hearing a Priority: Quarterly Newsletter, June 2022

Hearing loss in chronic diseases: an overlooked comorbidity

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define chronic diseases as “conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both”. They also estimate that six in ten adults in the US have a chronic disease, and that four in ten have two or more.

With 8.5% of adults aged 18 and older affected, diabetes is one of the most widspread chronic diseases, and is linked to hearing loss. It is believed that high blood sugar levels damage nerves and blood vessels within the hearing system, which in turn causes hearing loss.

In a similiar way, heart diseases have been identified as having connections with hearing loss. Indeed, such conditions can reduce the bloodflow in the hearing system, which can damage the latter and cause permanent sensorineural hearing loss.

Hearing loss is also a comorbidity of chronic kidney diseases, and can have several causes. For example, in the case of kidney failure, toxins can damage nerves in the inner ear. Moreover, therapeutics used to treat chronic kidney diseases are often ototoxic.

But these are not the only chronic diseases that have a connection to hearing loss : we can also include chronic inflammatory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic lung diseases, or even cancer.

To go in depth on this topic and on possible therapeutic solutions, join our Project Director in Drug Development and Translational Research’s presentation at the Inner Ear Disorders Therapeutics Summit on June 21st

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• Advances in hearing research
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CILcare’s Quarterly Newsletter, June 2022

Compliments of CILcare – a member of the EACCNY.