Statins and Their Effect on Hearing: An All of Us Database Study

Hearing loss affects approximately 23% of Americans and is associated with medical comorbidities including hyperlipidemia. Statins, commonly used for dyslipidemia, may protect against hearing loss in animal models, but human studies show mixed results. This study aims to investigate statins and their effect on hearing loss and tinnitus.

This study is a retrospective cohort study using the All of Us database. All of Us is a NIH-funded research database representing more than 710,000 participants in the United States. Patients with hyperlipidemia were labeled based on their exposure to at least 1 statin and additionally labeled for diagnoses of sensorineural hearing loss and/or tinnitus. Logistic regressions were performed with independent variables of statin use, aspirin use, diagnosis of hypertension and diabetes, age, race, and sex at birth and dependent variables of hearing loss and tinnitus.

A total of 90 271 patients with hyperlipidemia were included in this study. The analysis showed an association between the use of statins and sensorineural hearing loss (OR = 1.60, P < .01) as well as tinnitus (OR = 1.36, P < .01). In the individual statin analysis, simvastatin was associated with the strongest correlation with hearing loss (OR = 1.56, P < .01) and tinnitus (OR = 1.50, P < .01) while fluvastatin was the least associated both hearing loss (OR = 1.15, P < .01) and tinnitus (OR = 1.02, P = .68). Atorvastatin, the most used statin, was also associated with hearing loss (OR = 1.27, P < .01) and tinnitus (OR = 1.21, P < .01).

In this study, the All of Us database was used to investigate the relationship between statins and hearing loss/tinnitus. Results indicate a potential ototoxic association of statins on hearing and tinnitus.