Reporting by Jo Gambosi
Photo by Paul Rogers
My sister, Bev, who has stage 3 Parkinson’s disease, has developed major hearing difficulties since her diagnosis in 2017. Bev has worn hearing aids to treat age-related hearing loss for several years, but they have become less effective, particularly with the onset of Parkinson’s, and Bev struggles to hear the television and both in-person and phone conversations.
Parkinson’s disease can affect the cochlea, which is a hollow bone in the inner ear that plays an important role in hearing. Because dopamine helps protect the cochlea, reduced amounts of dopamine, which occurs in people with Parkinson’s, can damage it and lead to hearing loss.
One study published in 2014 in the European Journal of Neurology found that people with hearing loss were 1.77 times more likely to have Parkinson’s than people who did not suffer from hearing problems. The research team behind this study examined....
Read the original article on Parkinson's News Today here.
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