Poorer sleep quality is a risk factor for the development of hearing loss

Hearing loss affects more than 1,500 million people in the world and the projection for the coming years indicates a significant increase in its prevalence. Hearing loss is associated with multiple unfavorable health conditions such as dementia, frailty syndrome, depression and disability; In addition, it has a high economic and social cost.

Hearing loss has no cure, currently there are only treatments with limited efficacy. That is why finding factors that prevent hearing loss is a challenge for the international scientific community.

In this line, researchers from the Department of Preventive Medicine, Public Health and Microbiology of the Autonomous University of Madrid, IMDEA Alimentación and CIBERESP, analyzed information from more than 230,000 participants belonging to the UK Biobank study. Poorer sleep quality was found to increase the risk of hearing loss in middle-aged and older adults.

This work has been published in Ear and Hearing , the official scientific journal of the American Hearing Society. In it, different aspects of poor sleep quality, characterized by nocturnal snoring, daytime sleepiness, insomnia, difficulty getting up in the morning and a nocturnal chronotype, were analyzed and how these impact on the risk of hearing loss.

The results of the research show a clear and robust increase in the risk of hearing loss in those people who have a poorer quality of sleep, as explained by Dr. Humberto Yévenes-Briones, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Autonomous University of Madrid and first signatory of the study: "poor sleep quality exacerbates our probability of developing hearing loss in the future, increasing the risk by up to 49%."

As explained by Dr. Francisco Félix Caballero, a professor in the same department and second author of the study: "not sleeping the right hours during the night would increase the risk of hearing loss in those people with a poorer quality of sleep."

Dr. Yévenes-Briones adds: "given that there are effective interventions to improve sleep quality, our results may open a new avenue for the prevention of hearing loss." Also signing the paper are doctors Estrada-deLeón, Struijk, Mesas, Banegas, Rodríguez-Artalejo and Lopez-García.

Although more longitudinal studies with longer follow-up periods are needed, this research opens a window into the prevention of hearing loss and adds substantial knowledge about the impact of sleep quality on hearing function.

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Image: Poorer sleep quality increases the risk of hearing loss in middle-aged and older adults / Andrea Picquadio (Pexels)

Bibliographic reference: Yévenes-Briones, H., Caballero, FF, Estrada-deLeón, DB, Struijk, EA, Mesas, AE, Banegas, JR, Rodríguez-Artalejo, F., Lopez-García, E. (2023). Duration and Quality of Sleep and Risk of Self-reported Hearing Loss: The UK Biobank Study . Ear and Hearing . March 28. doi: 10.1097/AUD.00000000000001360

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