Open AccessThe effects of oral isotretinoin (13-Cis retinoic acid) on the inner ear: A prospective clinical study
Author(s) -
Akdag Mehmet,
Zeynep Meltem Akkurt,
Aylin Gül,
Derya Uçmak,
Burak Yılmaz,
Engin Şengül,
İsmail Topçu
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
clinical and investigative medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.391
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1488-2353
pISSN - 0147-958X
DOI - 10.25011/cim.v37i2.21092
Subject(s) - isotretinoin , medicine , acne , audiology , audiometry , absolute threshold of hearing , pure tone audiometry , hearing loss , dermatology
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of oral isotretinoin, a drug used in the treatment of acne vulgaris, on hearing function determined by serial audiology examinations. Methods: Forty patients with acne vulgaris were included in this study. Nine patients were excluded from the study because of inconsistent follow-up. The hearing of each participant was tested with pure tone audiometry and transient evoked autoacoustic emissions before and two and four weeks after treatment with isotretinoin (0.3-0.6 mg/kg/day) in the remaining 31 patients (62 ears).Results: The differences between the mean values of the pre-treatment and post-treatment pure tone hearing thresholds at 1000, 2000, 4000 and 6000 Hz frequencies were statistically significant (p 0.05). The difference between the pre-treatment and post-treatment signal–noise ratio values of the transient evoked autoacoustic emissions was not significantly different (p > 0.05).Conclusion: Our results suggest that the use of isotretinoin may cause bilateral hearing threshold changes. Further animal and human studies are required to investigate and characterize isotretinoin-induced neurophysiological alterations in hearing.