HIV and Hearing Loss
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center are beginning a five-year study on the strength of a $1.9 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders that will compare the hearing of people with HIV/AIDS to people without HIV.
According to study lead Amneris Luque, MD, associate professor of Medicine and director of Strong Memorial Hospital's AIDS Clinic, hearing loss has been reported among AIDS patients since the disease was recognized three decades ago, but these reports have gone unconfirmed.
"There has not been a systematic study looking at hearing function in people with HIV," Dr. Luque says. "If there is hearing impairment, it could be related to the disease itself; it might be related to infections that our patients with AIDS are prone to getting; or it might be related to the medications used to treat the disease."
Dr. Luque will work with a hearing research team renowned for their work with age-related hearing loss. He noted that scientists have found some evidence to suggest people with HIV/AIDS may age prematurely, and so that team will look closely at the effects of this possibility on hearing loss.
"We're trying to tease out what is happening in people with HIV," Dr. Luque says. "Is there something inherent about the infection that may be involved in hearing loss?"
Obviously the correlation between HIV and hearing loss is nothing new (a simple Google search turns up over a million hits), but hopefully this study will shed more definitive light on the subject.