Sleep medications linked to hearing loss

A longitudinal study presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies provided initial evidence linking sleep medication use from midlife to late life with worse late-life hearing symptoms.

Investigators assessed hearing test scores among more than 3,000 community-dwelling adults over a span of nearly 30 years. The sleep medication use was considered as any versus none at each visit, and group-based trajectory modeling identified three trajectory groups: nonusers (n = 2,398), increasing users (n = 449) and continuous users (n = 255). The sleep medications used by study participants included barbiturates, benzodiazepine derivatives, antidepressants and hypnotics.  

The investigators found a statistically significant association in hearing loss for increasing users compared with nonusers. Further studies are needed to better understand whether sleep medications directly contribute to hearing loss.

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