Beyond Clinical Hearing Assessments: Everyday Auditory Perception Challenges in People with Diabetes

What is it about?

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder marked by elevated blood sugar levels due to insulin deficiency or resistance. Over recent decades, researchers have found growing evidence linking diabetes to hearing issues. Most previous studies focused on traditional clinical hearing tests (like pure-tone audiometry), often highlighting hearing loss as a potential complication of diabetes. However, emerging evidence indicates diabetes may also impact higher-level auditory processing pathways in the brain, affecting more complex hearing abilities beyond basic hearing thresholds. The study, titled "Temporal Sensitivity in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and Insights Into Their Everyday Auditory Performance," published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (May 2025), specifically explores whether young adults with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM)—even those whose hearing appears clinically normal—experience difficulties hearing in complex environments. Patients with T1DM and healthy controls performed two psychoacoustic tasks: one measured perception of lexical stress cued by low-frequency pitch, and the other assessed speech-in-noise performance linked to temporal sensitivity and everyday auditory performance. Researchers also investigated how these auditory skills relate to diabetes-related health factors and real-life communication challenges.

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Photo by isens usa on Unsplash

Photo by isens usa on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The research by Ozlem Topcu, Süleyman Nahit Sendur, Hilal Dincer D'Alessandro, Merve Ozbal Batuk, and Gonca Sennaroglu is crucial because everyday auditory perception problems faced by people with T1DM may go unnoticed during regular clinical assessments. Despite the absence of severe end-organ damage, notable deterioration in temporal sensitivity has been observed in patients with T1DM. Even with normal pure-tone audiometric thresholds, these patients showed poorer low-frequency pitch perception and speech-in-noise performance, highlighting the need for assessing auditory processing abilities, as traditional methods may fail to detect such deficits. Monitoring auditory processing over time could offer clinicians valuable insights into disease progression and patients’ management of their condition, potentially improving treatment and overall disease management strategies.

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