A new study has found that sleep apnea increases a person's risk of hearing loss. Aside from disrupting sleep, the disorder could also be an indication of other health conditions.
About two to four percent of Americans are not aware that they have sleep apnea. While both men and women suffer from this sleep disorder, it is more common in middle-aged, overweight men. Sleep apnea affects one in every 15 Americans, or 6.62 percent of the total United States population.
Researchers from the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City studied around 14,000 participants with an average age of 41; nearly 53 percent of them were women. They looked at the backgrounds, lifestyles, as well as health issues such as diabetes, hypertension and fat levels in the blood, and cigarette and alcohol use of the participants. Subjects' noise exposure levels were also surveyed to determine whether they'd experienced hearing loss or snoring prior to the study. All the participants underwent audiometric testing and in-home sleep studies.
The analysis revealed that 10 percent of the participants had sleep apnea, while approximately 30 percent had a form of hearing impairment.
The researchers concluded that sleep apnea increases one's high frequency hearing impairment by 31 percent and 90 percent in low frequency. They also associated sleep apnea to a 38 percent increase in both high and low frequency hearing loss.
The findings supported the idea that sleep apnea may be an indicator of other health conditions.
Dr. Neomi Shah, one of the study's authors and an associate director of the pulmonary sleep lab at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, told Healthday News, "Sleep apnea is more of a systemic and chronic disease than just something that happens when you're sleeping. It probably affects multiple different organs, so I would probably urge we start thinking about sleep apnea as more like a chronic disease with vascular and inflammatory issues."
The results of the study were presented May 20 at the American Thoracic Society's annual meeting in San Diego, Calif.
