Assessing the hearing of children exposed to zika virus with an initially normal newborn hearing screen: a longitudinal cohort study

Auditory Neural Responses and Communicative Functioning in Children With Microcephaly Related to Congenital Zika Syndrome

“…The same factors affected ability to obtain reliable distortion product otoacoustic emissions without high noise floors for many children in this group. Despite these practical challenges associated with testing awake children with microcephaly, the extant literature suggests that incidence of peripheral hearing loss is low in this population (Anastasio et al 2018; Fandiño-Cárdenas et al 2018; Muniz et al 2022; Prestes et al 2023). In addition, wave I latencies, which are affected by peripheral hearing loss, were not significantly different between the microcephaly and control groups and fell within expected wave I latency ranges.…”

“…Current understanding of the long-term impact of prenatal ZIKV exposure on neurodevelopmental and behavioral outcomes, particularly in the area of auditory and communicative function, remains limited (Wheeler 2018). Peripheral hearing loss incidence is low according to newborn hearing screening results and hearing threshold estimates obtained using auditory brainstem response (ABR) methods (Anastasio et al 2018; Fandiño-Cárdenas et al 2018; Muniz et al 2022; Prestes et al 2023). Thus, peripheral hearing loss cannot account for high rates of communicative difficulties in CZS (Almeida et al 2022), suggesting that compromised central and/or peripheral neural processes are associated with altered auditory and language development.…”