Individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may have poorer low frequency or high frequency hearing than those who do not have the virus.
This is the first time the link between HIV and hearing loss in the age of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been sufficiently investigated, the JAMA Network Journals reported.
"The HIV [positive] adults had significantly poorer lower-frequency and higher-frequency hearing than HIV [negative] adults. High-frequency hearing loss is consistent with an accelerated aging (presbycusis); low-frequency hearing loss in middle age is unexpected. Because some vowels and consonants have predominantly low-frequency acoustic energy, poor low-frequency hearing may impair communication in HIV [positive] individuals," the researchers wrote in their study abstract.
To make their findings researchers at San Diego State University looked at pure-tone hearing thresholds in 262 men with an average age of 57 (117 of which were HIV positive) and 134 women with an average age of almost 48 (105 with HIV).
The team found high-frequency pure-tone average (HPTA) and low-frequency (LPTA) were higher (meaning poorer hearing) in adults that were HIV positive when compared to those who did not have HIV. The results were not found to be linked to other factors such as "antiretroviral medications, current CD4+ cell count and HIV viral load."
"To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that HIV [positive] individuals have poorer hearing across the frequency range after many other factors known to affect hearing have been controlled for," the study concluded.
This research was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health and were published in a recent edition of the JAMA Network Journals. Peter Torre III, of San Diego State University, California ran the study.
