1 in 4 Adults With Diabetes Has Significant Hearing Loss

A major new systematic review and meta-analysis has found that approximately 1 in 4 adults living with diabetes has clinically significant hearing loss, a finding that researchers say makes a compelling case for routine hearing screening as a standard part of diabetes care.

“Diabetes is the world’s fastest growing chronic disease, affecting over half a billion people, and people with diabetes are more than twice as likely to experience serious hearing loss,” explained lead investigator Dr. Mehwish Nisar, from The University of Queensland’s School of Public Health. “This isn’t a minor inconvenience; hearing loss in people with diabetes often strikes working-age adults in their 40s and 50s, affecting daily conversations, fueling isolation and creating significant communication challenges.”

The study, published in Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, analyzed data from 29 observational studies involving more than 5,000 participants published between 2000 and 2025. Investigators focused specifically on moderate to severe hearing loss, defined as a threshold of 40 decibels or higher.

The connection between diabetes and hearing loss is not new, but it has been underappreciated in clinical practice. Diabetes damages the small blood vessels and nerves throughout the body, and the inner ear is particularly vulnerable to that kind of microvascular and neuropathic damage. The delicate hair cells and neural pathways responsible for hearing depend on a consistent, healthy blood supply, and when diabetes disrupts that supply over time, hearing can quietly deteriorate.

The pooled prevalence across studies was 24%, meaning roughly 1 in 4 diabetic adults is living with hearing loss significant enough to interfere with daily life. More striking still, the analysis found that adults with diabetes were more than twice as likely to have moderate to severe hearing loss compared to people without diabetes.

“Crucially, clinically significant hearing loss is detectable through straightforward, low-cost audiometric screening, presenting a vital opportunity for early diagnosis and intervention,’’ Nasir noted. “The more than twofold increased risk identified in this review supports the integration of routine audiometric screening into standard diabetes care, with particular urgency for younger adults.”

Several findings within the data deserve particular attention. Younger adults under the age of 60 with diabetes faced a significantly higher than the risk seen in older adults over 60, where the association was not statistically significant. This suggests that hearing loss related to diabetes may be striking earlier in life than previously understood, at an age when people are still working, raising families and least likely to expect it.

The risk was also substantially higher in low- and middle-income countries compared with high-income countries, pointing to the role that limited access to diabetes management, nutritional support and health care resources plays in compounding the damage.

Perhaps most importantly, elevated risk was detected even in people who had lived with diabetes for less than 10 years, suggesting that hearing damage may begin earlier in the course of the disease than many clinicians assume.

The investigators conclude that these findings support integrating routine audiometric screening into standard diabetes care. For patients, if you are living with diabetes and have not had your hearing formally evaluated, it is worth asking your doctor about it. Hearing loss is often gradual and easy to dismiss or attribute to aging, but catching it early opens the door to intervention before the damage becomes more severe.

“Despite clear links, hearing loss is not yet systematically integrated into diabetes care protocols,” said Nisar. “Raising awareness of this hidden complication could help identify hearing problems earlier and improve quality of life for millions of people.’’