If your autoimmune disorder is causing muscular issues, you’ll call to schedule an appointment at The Art of Touch Therapeutic Massage. If your disorder is causing hearing problems, you should probably schedule an appointment at Advanced Hearing for a hearing evaluation.
Unfortunately, it’s often the case that autoimmune disorders cause trouble hearing and other types of inner ear dysfunction. We review the connection below.
What Are Autoimmune Disorders?
A healthy immune system defends the body against infections and diseases. However, in the case of autoimmune disorders, the immune system malfunctions, mistakenly attacking healthy cells, tissues and organs. These attacks can affect any part of the body, resulting in weakened bodily function. They can even be life-threatening.
How Can Autoimmune Disorders Affect Hearing?
While different autoimmune disorders have different effects on the body, including the auditory system, it usually comes down to either inflammation or disrupted blood flow to the inner ears. Autoimmune disorders can affect one or both ears, develop suddenly or slowly and affect different frequencies.
Treatment options include corticosteroids to reduce inflammation, plasma transfers to clear antibodies that attack phospholipids from the blood and hearing aids in the case of permanent hearing loss.
Autoimmune Disorders that Affect Hearing
Below are some of autoimmune disorders that can affect your hearing.
Autoimmune Inner Ear Disorder (AIED)
While quite rare, one autoimmune disorder that causes damage to the hearing system is autoimmune inner ear disorder (AIED). With this condition, immune cells attack the inner ear, causing permanent progressive and fluctuating hearing loss. This type of hearing loss can be sudden, though it more often develops over days or months.
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that primarily affects the joints, especially the hands, wrists and knees, but can spread to internal organs in severe cases. According to one estimate, the number of RA patients that develop hearing loss is as high as 72%. In fact, a 2020 review found that people with RA are four times more likely to have sensorineural hearing loss compared to people without the disorder. RA typically causes hearing loss that affects both ears and fluctuates. It typically affects higher frequencies. For more information or to schedule an appointment for a hearing test, call Advanced Hearing today.