- Planters Peanut Products Under Recall Due to Listeria Risk
- That ‘New Car Smell’ Could Be Toxic Carcinogens
- Gene Discovery Points to a New Form of Alzheimer’s
- Scientists May Have Located Your Brain’s ‘Neural Compass’
- Almost All Counterfeit Oxycontin Pills Contain Fentanyl
- A Parent’s Watchful Eye Does Keep Kids From Drugs, Alcohol: Study
- AI Might Boost Detection of A-Fib
- Drug May Help Folks Kick the Vaping Habit
- Small Pump May Let Kids Stay Home As They Await New Heart
- Gene Therapy Improves Vision in People With Inherited Blindness
Hearing Loss Joins Long List of Smoking Harms
You can add hearing loss to the many health risks of smoking, new research suggests.
For the study, researchers analyzed eight years of health data on more than 50,000 people in Japan.
After accounting for work-related noise exposure and other hearing loss risk factors, the investigators found that smokers were 1.2 to 1.6 times more likely to suffer hearing loss than people who never smoked.
“With a large sample size, long follow-up period and objective assessment of hearing loss, our study provides strong evidence that smoking is an independent risk factor of hearing loss,” said study lead author Dr. Huanhuan Hu, from the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, in Japan.
And the more people smoked, the greater their risk of both high- and low-frequency hearing loss.
The increased risk of hearing loss associated with smoking did decline within five years after a person quit smoking, the researchers reported.
The study was published March 14 in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
“These results provide strong evidence to support that smoking is a causal factor for hearing loss, and emphasize the need for tobacco control to prevent or delay the development of hearing loss,” Hu added in a journal news release.
But the study could not prove that smoking caused hearing loss; it only showed an association.
More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more on hearing problems.
Source: HealthDay
Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.