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The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone

BACKGROUND: Globally, hearing loss is the second leading cause of disability, affecting approximately 18.7% of the world’s population. However, the burden of hearing loss is unequally distributed, with the majority of affected individuals located in Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. Following the 2014 Wes...

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Autores principales: Ficenec, Samuel C., Grant, Donald S., Sumah, Ibrahim, Alhasan, Foday, Yillah, Mohamed S., Brima, Jenneh, Konuwa, Edwin, Gbakie, Michael A., Kamara, Fatima K., Bond, Nell G., Engel, Emily J., Shaffer, Jeffrey G., Fischer, William A., Wohl, David A., Emmett, Susan D., Schieffelin, John S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290210/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35850699
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07604-y
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author Ficenec, Samuel C.
Grant, Donald S.
Sumah, Ibrahim
Alhasan, Foday
Yillah, Mohamed S.
Brima, Jenneh
Konuwa, Edwin
Gbakie, Michael A.
Kamara, Fatima K.
Bond, Nell G.
Engel, Emily J.
Shaffer, Jeffrey G.
Fischer, William A.
Wohl, David A.
Emmett, Susan D.
Schieffelin, John S.
author_facet Ficenec, Samuel C.
Grant, Donald S.
Sumah, Ibrahim
Alhasan, Foday
Yillah, Mohamed S.
Brima, Jenneh
Konuwa, Edwin
Gbakie, Michael A.
Kamara, Fatima K.
Bond, Nell G.
Engel, Emily J.
Shaffer, Jeffrey G.
Fischer, William A.
Wohl, David A.
Emmett, Susan D.
Schieffelin, John S.
author_sort Ficenec, Samuel C.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Globally, hearing loss is the second leading cause of disability, affecting approximately 18.7% of the world’s population. However, the burden of hearing loss is unequally distributed, with the majority of affected individuals located in Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. Following the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, disease survivors began to describe hearing loss as part of the constellation of symptoms known as Post-Ebola Syndrome. The goal of this study was to more fully characterize hearing loss among Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) survivors. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: EVD survivors and their household contacts were recruited (n = 1,12) from Eastern Sierra Leone. Each individual completed a symptom questionnaire, physical exam, and a two-step audiometry process measuring both air and bone conduction thresholds. In comparison to contacts, EVD survivors were more likely to have complaints or abnormal findings affecting every organ system. A significantly greater percentage of EVD survivors were found to have hearing loss in comparison to contacts (23% vs. 9%, p < 0.001). Additionally, survivors were more likely to have bilateral hearing loss of a mixed etiology. Logistic regression revealed that the presence of any symptoms of middle or inner ear (p < 0.001), eye (p = 0.005), psychiatric (p = 0.019), and nervous system (p = 0.037) increased the odds of developing hearing loss. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This study is the first to use an objective and standardized measurement to report hearing loss among EVD survivors in a clinically meaningful manner. In this study it was found that greater than 1/5th of EVD survivors develop hearing loss. The association between hearing impairment and symptoms affecting the eye and nervous system may indicate a similar mechanism of pathogenesis, which should be investigated further. Due to the quality of life and socioeconomic detriments associated with untreated hearing loss, a greater emphasis must be placed on understanding and mitigating hearing loss following survival to aid in economic recovery following infectious disease epidemics. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07604-y.
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spelling pubmed-92902102022-07-19 The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone Ficenec, Samuel C. Grant, Donald S. Sumah, Ibrahim Alhasan, Foday Yillah, Mohamed S. Brima, Jenneh Konuwa, Edwin Gbakie, Michael A. Kamara, Fatima K. Bond, Nell G. Engel, Emily J. Shaffer, Jeffrey G. Fischer, William A. Wohl, David A. Emmett, Susan D. Schieffelin, John S. BMC Infect Dis Research BACKGROUND: Globally, hearing loss is the second leading cause of disability, affecting approximately 18.7% of the world’s population. However, the burden of hearing loss is unequally distributed, with the majority of affected individuals located in Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. Following the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, disease survivors began to describe hearing loss as part of the constellation of symptoms known as Post-Ebola Syndrome. The goal of this study was to more fully characterize hearing loss among Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) survivors. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: EVD survivors and their household contacts were recruited (n = 1,12) from Eastern Sierra Leone. Each individual completed a symptom questionnaire, physical exam, and a two-step audiometry process measuring both air and bone conduction thresholds. In comparison to contacts, EVD survivors were more likely to have complaints or abnormal findings affecting every organ system. A significantly greater percentage of EVD survivors were found to have hearing loss in comparison to contacts (23% vs. 9%, p < 0.001). Additionally, survivors were more likely to have bilateral hearing loss of a mixed etiology. Logistic regression revealed that the presence of any symptoms of middle or inner ear (p < 0.001), eye (p = 0.005), psychiatric (p = 0.019), and nervous system (p = 0.037) increased the odds of developing hearing loss. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This study is the first to use an objective and standardized measurement to report hearing loss among EVD survivors in a clinically meaningful manner. In this study it was found that greater than 1/5th of EVD survivors develop hearing loss. The association between hearing impairment and symptoms affecting the eye and nervous system may indicate a similar mechanism of pathogenesis, which should be investigated further. Due to the quality of life and socioeconomic detriments associated with untreated hearing loss, a greater emphasis must be placed on understanding and mitigating hearing loss following survival to aid in economic recovery following infectious disease epidemics. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-022-07604-y. BioMed Central 2022-07-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9290210/ /pubmed/35850699 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07604-y Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Ficenec, Samuel C.
Grant, Donald S.
Sumah, Ibrahim
Alhasan, Foday
Yillah, Mohamed S.
Brima, Jenneh
Konuwa, Edwin
Gbakie, Michael A.
Kamara, Fatima K.
Bond, Nell G.
Engel, Emily J.
Shaffer, Jeffrey G.
Fischer, William A.
Wohl, David A.
Emmett, Susan D.
Schieffelin, John S.
The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title_full The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title_fullStr The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title_full_unstemmed The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title_short The prevalence of Post-Ebola Syndrome hearing loss, Sierra Leone
title_sort prevalence of post-ebola syndrome hearing loss, sierra leone
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9290210/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35850699
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07604-y
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