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A Case-Control Study

David M. Nondahl, MS; Karen J. Cruickshanks, PhD; Dayna S. Dalton, MS; Carla R. Schubert, MS; Barbara E. K. Klein, MD; Ronald Klein, MD; Ted S. Tweed, MS

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2004;130:1260-1264.

Background  A growing body of literature suggests an association between cigarette smoking and hearing loss.

Objective  To assess the relation between levels of serum cotinine, a biomarker of exposure to tobacco smoke, and incident hearing loss.

Design  A cross-sectional, incident, case-control study of participants selected from a population-based cohort.

Setting  Testing was conducted at the Beaver Dam Community Hospital, Beaver Dam, Wis.

Participants  A total of 197 participants with incident hearing loss and 394 control participants, aged 53 to 75 years, selected from the 2800 participants of the 5-year follow-up examination of the population-based Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study, 1998-2000.

Main Outcome Measure  Incident hearing loss. The incidence of hearing loss was defined as a pure-tone average of thresholds at 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz greater than 25-dB hearing level in either ear at follow-up among those without hearing loss at baseline.

Results  No significant associations were found between serum cotinine levels and incident hearing loss.

Conclusions  These results were not consistent with a previous report, which found cross-sectional associations between prevalent hearing loss and current smoking and environmental tobacco smoke exposure in the home. Longer-term longitudinal studies of smoking and/or serum cotinine levels and the subsequent development of hearing loss may help clarify these associations.

Author Affiliations: Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences (Messrs Nondahl and Tweed, Drs Cruickshanks, B. E. K. Klein, and R. Klein, and Mss Dalton and Schubert), Population Health Sciences (Dr Cruickshanks), and Communicative Disorders (Mr Tweed), The University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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