Duration and Quality of Sleep and Risk of Self-reported Hearing Loss: The UK Biobank Study

Abstract

Objective: The duration and quality of sleep have been associated with multiple health conditions in adults. However, whether sleep duration and quality are associated with hearing loss (HL) is uncertain. The present study investigates the prospective association between duration and quality of sleep and HL. Design: This longitudinal analysis included 231,650 participants aged 38 to 72 years from the UK Biobank cohort, established in 2006–2010 in the United Kingdom. Duration and sleep complaints (snoring at night, daytime sleepiness, sleeplessness, difficulty getting up in the morning, and eveningness preference) were self-reported. HL was self-reported at baseline and during the follow-up. Results: Over a median follow-up of 4.19 (SD: 2.15) years, 6436 participants reported incident HL. In fully adjusted models, in comparison with sleeping between 7 and 8 hours a day, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) (95% CI) associated with sleeping <7 hours a day was 1.01 (0.95 to 1.07), and for sleeping >8 hours a day was 0.98 (0.88 to 1.08). After adjustment for potential confounders, the HRs (95% confidence interval) of HL associated with having 1, 2, 3, and 4 to 5 vs. 0 sleep complaints were: 1.15 (1.05 to 1.27), 1.16 (1.05 to 1.28), 1.32 (1.19 to 1.47), and 1.49 (1.31 to 1.69), respectively; p for trend: <0.001. An increase in the number of sleep complaints was associated with higher risk of HL among participants with non-optimal sleep duration than among participants with optimal sleep duration. Conclusion: In this large population-based study, poor sleep quality was associated with an increased risk of HL; however, sleep duration was not associated with risk.

Association between sleep duration and hearing threshold shifts of adults in the United States: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2015–2016

“…The correlations of short sleep with worse low-, and speech-frequency hearing were found for US adults 40-59 years of age when stratified by age. This result differs from the previous studies [24][25][26][27]. A cross-sectional and longitudinal study conducted by Nakajima, K et al investigated 48,091 and 6,674 healthy Japanese general population, respectively, illustrating a potential positive relationship between longer sleep duration and subclinical HL among adults aged 20-79 years, without adjusting noise exposure [24].…”

“…The results of multivariable linear regression analysis in our study are broadly consistent with the three previous population-based studies among adults in both the United states and Japan, which reported association of long sleep duration (sleep duration exceeded 8 h) with worse hearing [24][25][26], but are inconsistent with the conclusions drawn from studies in the population from UK and China, which indicated no association or a negative association between long sleep duration and HL [26,27]. The correlations of short sleep with worse low-, and speech-frequency hearing were found for US adults 40-59 years of age when stratified by age.…”

“…One Chinese population based cross-sectional study has reported negative relationship between sleep duration ≥ 8 h/night and HL [26]. One longitudinal study including 231,650 UK participants aged 38-72 years old has shown no relationship between sleep duration and the risk of HL [27]. Racial heterogeneity, differences in sample size, study design and available covariate data may possible explanations of the disparities between our results and the previous studies The potential mechanism underlying the relationship between sleep duration and hearing is not clear.…”

“…The plausible mechanism prompts the relationship between sleep duration and HL. However, only four cross-sectional studies have investigated the association in adults, based on Japanese, American, Chinese and the UK population [24][25][26][27], the results of which are inconsistent.…”