Results of a study published on-line this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported that women who take the most common form of hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) have a hearing loss of 10 to 30 percent more compared to similar women who have not had the therapy.

By all measures, women whose HRT included progestin - the most common type of HRT -had worse hearing than the other groups. The tests showed that women who had received progestin had problems both in the inner ear and in the portions of the brain used for hearing.

The results also show no benefit to hearing for women who take a form of HRT that includes estrogen alone, a surprise to researchers who thought that estrogen might help hearing.

When a woman's HRT included progestin (a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone), the age-related hearing loss in women is accelerated compared to those to women taking estrogen alone or women not taking HRT.

Read more at EurekALert.

[Photo Credit: OVDN.org]