Does antioxidants helps with sudden hearing loss?

Approximately 16,000 people suffer every year in US from some problems with hearing. Taking of certain antioxidants may improve the prognosis.

In a sudden hearing loss occurs for no apparent reason. It is mostly one-sided hearing loss, which can lead to deafness. In addition, can occur dizziness and ringing in the ears (tinnitus). The exact causes of sudden hearing loss are still unclear, but there is a thought that circulatory disorders in the inner ear leading to a lack supply of the sensory cells. Also chronic stress and lack of exercise and smoking can increase the risk of a sudden hearing loss.

For some time, there are also indications that free radicals increase the damage. Now a team of doctors has investigated additional treatment with free radical. Maybe they can improve the treatment outcome. The researchers administered 70 patients who had just experienced some special treatment in addition to standard therapy for 30 days with combination of antioxidants. The cocktail contains 400 mg vitamin C, 56,000 IU of vitamin A, 400 IU of vitamin E and 100 micrograms of selenium. The amount of vitamins which ingested was about 10 to 20 times more than the recommended daily allowance. The control group received only the standard therapy of methylprednisolone, trimetazidine and hyperbaric oxygen.

With vitamins often begins complete remission.

It turned out that the adjunctive therapy with vitamins A, C and E and selenium, significantly improved prognosis after acute hearing loss. Thus, the hearing threshold in this group fell by 10 dB stronger than in the patients who received the standard treatment. In the group receiving the nutritional supplement program the hearing threshold was decreased by 36 dB, in the control group they decreased by only 27 dB. Fully recovered of the hearing was achieved at 37 percent in the vitamin group, but only 29 percent in the control group.

Patients were asked whether they wanted to take an adjunctive therapy with antioxidants or not, which could have led to a distortion of the result. However, other studies have certificate about benefit of antioxidants, especially with the combination of vitamins C and E.