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Older
women taking certain hormone replacement therapy may suffer hearing
damage, scientists report. A study of 124 postmenopausal women found that
those taking hormone replacement therapy that included progestin had
poorer speech understanding than women who were not taking hormones or who
were using estrogen only. The findings, by a team led by Dr. Robert D.
Frisina at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.,
are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. The team previously had reported indications of hearing problems
associated with hormone therapy and their new study says progestin is the
likely culprit.
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September
2006
As a
group, women have better hearing all through their lives than men. That's
not just true among human beings-female mammals in general tend to have
better hearing than their male counterparts. Why would that be? For years,
scientists speculated that hormones might have something to do with it.
But now comes surprising evidence that one of the hormones women naturally
produce-progesterone-seems to have a negative effect on hearing. More
specifically, menopausal women taking combined hormone therapy (estrogen
and progestin, a synthetic version of progesterone) were found to have
significantly worse hearing than women taking estrogen alone or no
hormones at all.
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