Type 2 diabetes and hearing loss in black Africans*

Three decade change in the prevalence of hearing impairment and its association with diabetes in the United States

“…Diabetes has been established as a risk factor for HI in epidemiologic and pathologic studies (Parving et al, 1990;Sasso et al, 1999;Varkonyi et al, 2002;Ologe and Okoro, 2005;Vaughan et al, 2006;Sakuta et al, 2007). The mechanism by which diabetes could result in HI is not clear.…”

Hearing function in Nigerian children with a family history of type 2 diabetes

“…For these reasons and based on our earlier observations [1], which showed a difference of over 30% between hearing levels in controls and type 2 diabetes, it was calculated that a sample size of 25 will have a power of 0.80 to detect a difference of 30% in hearing levels between off-spring of type 2 diabetes and the control. For an exploratory study, this inbuilt power was thought sufficient to attempt to answer this question while holding down cost.…”

“…Weight, height and sitting blood pressure were taken as extensively described in details previously [1,5] and an observer-based questionnaire was also administered to gather demographic information.…”

“…All potential candidates were evaluated to exclude a past history of ear disease; ear, head and neck trauma; family history of hearing handicap; use of ototoxic drugs and exposure to excessive noise as defined previously [1]. The presence of any of these was a ground for exclusion.…”

“…Recently, we [1] observed that black Africans with type 2 diabetes also had hearing loss. However, contrary to our expectation but in conformity with data from the larger population-based Wisconsin Study [2], the hearing loss associated with type 2 diabetes was neither related to the duration of diabetes nor degree of diabetic control over time; thus, raising the possibility that both conditions could be linked in a way other than on a cause and effect basis.…”