The Correlation between Hearing Loss and Obesity in Adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: Understand the relationship between obesity and hearing loss (HL) in adolescents. Methods: Adolescents (ages 12-19) were examined in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007-08 and 2009-10. Extracted data included age, sex, ethnicity, poverty-income ratio, and body mass index (BMI). Obesity was assessed according to age/sex specific criteria. Patients underwent formal audiometry as part of the survey protocol. The “low” pure tone average (PTA at 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz) and “high” PTA (3000, 4000, 6000, and 8000 Hz) were computed. Patients were classified as having low and/or high tone HL if the respective PTA was greater than 15 dB. Multivariate analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between obesity and hearing loss. Results: 27.7 +/- 1.2 million adolescents (unweighted n = 2,062) were examined. 13.1 +/- 2.1% of obese adolescents had low tone HL versus 8.5 +/- 1.0% of non-obese adolescents. Similarly, 20.0 +/- 2.6% of obese adolescents had high tone HL versus 13.4 +/- 1.3% of non-obese adolescents. On multivariate analysis, low tone HL was not associated with obesity ( P = 0.074). However, obesity was associated with high tone HL in either ear with an increased odds ratio of 1.58 (95% confidence interval 1.12-2.22; P = 0.011). Similarly, obesity was associated with bilateral high tone HL with an increased odds ratio of 1.88 (1.15-3.07; P = 0.013). Both low and high PTAs in the better hearing ear increased with increasing BMI ( P = 0.001 and P = 0.006, respectively). Conclusions: Obesity has a notable relationship with the presence and degree of HL in adolescents, particularly in the high frequencies, and further investigation is warranted.