WEDNESDAY, April 26, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- Aspirin can help prevent hearing loss caused by common antibiotics called aminoglycosides, a new report finds.
Aminoglycosides are inexpensive antibiotics that have been used for the past 60 years to treat acute infections, cystic fibrosis, tuberculosis and other conditions. However, their use has also been linked to irreversible hearing loss.
As reported by a U.S.-Chinese team in the April 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the study included 195 Chinese patients who received 80 milligrams to 160 milligrams of gentamicin (a type of aminoglycoside) intravenously, twice daily, for five to seven days. Of those 195 patients, 89 received aspirin along with the antibiotic and 106 were given a placebo along with the antibiotic.
The rate of hearing loss among patients who received aspirin was 3 percent, compared with 13 percent among the patients who received the placebo. That translates to a 75 percent lower rate of hearing loss among patients who received aspirin.
"We would like to see the word get around to the medical community around the world that you can take some precautions to minimize the risk to your patients. Aspirin is available everywhere, and it's cheap," study senior author Jochen Schacht, a professor of biological chemistry in otolaryngology, University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School, said in a prepared statement.
This study builds on previous U-M research in animals.
"Previously, we found that such a treatment works well in mice, but I am very excited that this worked so well in humans. Translating animal studies into clinical practice is not an easy thing to do. We were fortunate that our extrapolation from mice to men and women worked in the first trial," said Schacht, who is director of the U-M Health System's Kresge Hearing Research Institute.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about aminoglycosides.
