Association between diabetes and hearing impairment in a large health check-up population

There have been few reports of evidence enabling estimation of the risk of association of diabetes with hearing impairment for the Japanese population. This cross-sectional study investigated the association in generally healthy Japanese (n = 2,753) who visited Saiseikai Central Hospital (Tokyo, Japan) for a health check-up. Logistic regression analysis was performed to calculate odds ratios for high-frequency and low-frequency hearing impairment among diabetic people compared with non-diabetic people. The results showed diabetes was associated with a 1.3-fold increase in the odds of high-frequency hearing impairment, after adjustment for age, gender, BMI, low HDL-cholesterol, abdominal obesity, hypertension, and smoking status. A significant association was not observed between diabetes and low-frequency hearing impairment. This study reported diabetes is associated with high-frequency hearing impairment irrespective of metabolic risk factors for a large health check-up population. The causal association was not confirmed because of the study design. Further research should be performed to determine the mechanism.