Hormone Replacement Therapy and Hearing Loss (original) (raw)

Frankly I’m surprised that we haven’t heard more about the effects of female hormones on hearing loss. For many years I’ve been hearing anecdotal evidence that hormonal changes cause hearing loss. Women regularly report sudden drops in hearing with childbirth, menopause, and hysterectomies. There’s the occasional medical report that confirms the stories, but the information does has apparently not yet reached the general public!

May 2004 – Hormone replacement therapy linked to hearing loss? Here’s a press release about an interesting study at NTID!

September 2006 – Hormone Therapy May Damage Hearing

September 2006 – Female Hormone May Damage Hearing

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Hormone Therapy May Damage Hearing

Older women taking certain hormone replacement therapy may suffer hearing damage, scientists report. A study of 124 postmenopausal women found that those taking hormone replacement therapy that included progestin had poorer speech understanding than women who were not taking hormones or who were using estrogen only. The findings, by a team led by Dr. Robert D. Frisina at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., are reported in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team previously had reported indications of hearing problems associated with hormone therapy and their new study says progestin is the likely culprit. Full Story

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Female Hormone May Damage Hearing

September 2006

As a group, women have better hearing all through their lives than men. That’s not just true among human beings-female mammals in general tend to have better hearing than their male counterparts. Why would that be? For years, scientists speculated that hormones might have something to do with it. But now comes surprising evidence that one of the hormones women naturally produce-progesterone-seems to have a negative effect on hearing. More specifically, menopausal women taking combined hormone therapy (estrogen and progestin, a synthetic version of progesterone) were found to have significantly worse hearing than women taking estrogen alone or no hormones at all. Full Story