Prevalence of hearing loss and tinnitus in a group of adults with Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
Alison Millar, Karin Joubert, Alida Naude
PMID 32129664WHAT IT FOUND
Hearing loss was no more common in HIV-positive adults than in HIV-negative controls.
Tinnitus was significantly more prevalent in the HIV-positive group, reported by 57% compared with 34% of controls.
Key findings
01The prevalence of hearing loss was 10% in the HIV-positive group and 6% in the control group, a difference that was not statistically significant.
02The overall prevalence of tinnitus was 57% in the HIV-positive group and 34% in the control group, a statistically significant difference.
03Mean pure tone thresholds were similar between groups, with the HIV-positive group averaging 12.6 dB HL in the left ear and 12.3 dB HL in the right ear.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that HIV or antiretroviral treatment caused the higher rate of tinnitus. The sample size was small, particularly for the control group, which limits the reliability of the comparisons. Hearing loss was defined using the pure tone average, so isolated high-frequency losses may have been missed, and the authors note that using frequency-specific criteria would have raised the prevalence to 22%. The HIV-positive group was mostly at early stages of infection and on first-line regimens, so the results may not apply to people with advanced disease or different treatments. Tinnitus was assessed by self-report and detailed categories may have encouraged more reporting, which could inflate prevalence compared with older studies.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that HIV or antiretroviral treatment caused the tinnitus. This was a cross-sectional study, so it only shows an association and cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship.