With news of Hugh Hefner losing his hearing due to his taking of Viagra, we wanted to put any worrisome associations between hearing loss and the PDE5 inhibitor to bed. Hefner’s appearance might be deceiving but he is in fact an 85 year old man behind that cheeky glint in his eye and beneath his army of svelte girlfriends, all who are probably on average 60 years his junior. We suggest that this hearing loss has come with age and nothing more.
In a study carried out last year, data on 11,525 men over the age of 40 years was gathered and men who reported using the PDE5 inhibitors were x2 as likely to experience hearing loss as those who did not take the drugs. The findings were published in Archives of Otolaryngology.
What they do not know is how such treatments can affect the ear. ED treatments like Viagra increase blood flow to tissues of the body and some guess that it may have a similar effect on the ear but nothing is certain. Furthermore, the study had its limitations including the fact that the sample size was much too small for those taking the active ingredients found in Cialis and Levitra. More of the men were taking Viagra. The authors were quite concerned about men who possibly did not report their use of PDE5 inhibitors and lastly, pre-existing conditions that might cause deafness or hearing loss were not even considered.
More research will be carried out on this topic but there is no strong evidence to suggest that Viagra or any other PDE5 inhibitor is associated with deafness.