Can My Medications Cause Hearing Loss?

If you’re like most people, you likely take a few medications for various health problems, whether chronic or otherwise. However, did you know that certain medications can actually cause short-term or even long-term hearing loss? This phenomenon is called ototoxicity, or drug-induced hearing loss. Here’s what to know about hearing loss from medications and what causes it.

How do medications cause hearing loss?

There are actually over 200 medications that can impact your hearing ability. They specifically impact the cells in the inner ear, causing symptoms like hearing loss, ringing, and balance problems. There are five different classes of ototoxic medications and here’s what to know about them.

Antibiotics

There’s a huge variety of antibiotic medications available, but the specific type that has been shown to impact your hearing is aminoglycosides. These types of antibiotics include mycin drugs and are used to treat more severe infections like meningitis. They tend to linger in the inner ear even after the final dose.

Chemotherapy Drugs

Cisplatin is one platinum-based medication that can cause hearing loss in patients who are undergoing treatment for bladder, ovarian, and testicular cancer, as well as many other types. Hearing loss with this medication is very common and can occur in as many as half of patients who use it.

Over-the-Counter Pain Relievers

Pain relievers like naproxen, acetaminophen, and aspirin are widely used by most people. However, hearing loss with pain relievers is only associated with very high doses or prolonged use (as much as eight aspirin per day, for example).

Diuretics

Diuretics are used for a variety of health conditions like edema, high blood pressure, and glaucoma. Their purpose is to reduce the amount of fluid in the body – it’s not well understood why diuretics can cause hearing loss, but it’s thought that it impacts the fluid in the inner ear.

Quinine Drugs

Quinine has been used widely as an anti-malarial drug – however, there are synthetic forms (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine) used off-label for other chronic health concerns like autoimmune diseases. They’re also used in emergency situations by hospitals (most famously for COVID-19 patients, initially). Although it has been shown to be temporary, many patients have experienced hearing loss within days of starting treatment.

Schedule an Appointment

It’s important to keep taking your medications if they’ve been prescribed by your primary care physician. But, if you’re concerned about hearing loss from medications, our team can help. Meet with our Doctors of Audiology by scheduling your consultation through our online form or calling us at (212) 774-1971.