Comparative Study Of The Prevalence Of Hearing Loss Among Hepatitis B Virus Infected Patients And Uninfected Volunteers: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

Background: Worldwide the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is considered a major public health concern, infecting about two billion people. Annually, the disease accounts for about one million deaths. The prevalence of the disease is considered high in Africa, affecting about 8% of the population in West Africa and between 5 to 7% in Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa. Ghana has a high prevalence rate of 12.3% with most infected persons seeking medical attention at the terminal stage of the disease. Studies have reported hearing loss among HBV infected persons. Though Ghana is considered a high endemic region, currently no such data exists. This necessitated the study to investigate the prevalence of hearing loss among persons with HBV infection.

Aim: The study determined the prevalence of hearing loss among persons with HBV infection compared with uninfected volunteers.

Methods: This case-control study recruited 57 persons diagnosed of HBV infection (case group) and 60 uninfected volunteers (control group) between the ages of 18 and 40 years. All the 117 participants undertook tympanometry (middle ear analysis), pure tone audiometry (hearing test), and transient evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) test. Hearing threshold greater than 25 dB was considered a hearing loss. Data were statistically analyzed using student‟s t-test.

Results: There were 31 (54%) males and 26 (46%) females in the case group. The control group included 31 (51.7%) males and 29 (48.3%) females. Among the case group, the mean age was 30 ± 5.6 years and 24.9 ± 4.6 years among the control group. The tympanometry results showed that all 117 participants presented normal middle ear function in both ears. The results of the pure tone audiometry showed a pure tone average (PTA) of 22.19 dB HL for the case group for

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the right ear and 21.92 dB HL for the left ear, whiles the control group recorded a PTA of 15.42 dB HL for the right ear and 15.89 for the left ear. The PTA of the two groups showed a significant difference (p