A Comparative study of Auditory Evoked Potential in Young Obese and Normal Subjects

摘要

Obesity is a metabolic syndrome associated with many established neurological conditions like meralgia paresthetica, migraine, carpal tunnel syndrome. Well documented defects in nerve conduction, dysfunction involving both peripheral motor and sensory nerves is observed in obese individuals. There is no documented study of cranial nerve involvement in obese individuals. Hence this study was performed to assess the Auditory nerve by auditory evoked potential in young obese Indian adult individuals. Auditory evoked potentials of young obese adults aged between 15 and 30 years were compared with normal. The study recruited 60 age and sex matched normal hearing (confirmed by Pure Tone Audiometry) obese and control subjects. One way ANOVA test was used for the inferential statistics. A significant (P0.05) increase in the latencies of auditory evoked potential waves I, III, V and no significant change in the inter peak latencies of waves I-III, III-V and I-V were observed in both ears of obese individuals compared with normal subjects. This study demonstrates that the obese individuals are prone to develop early conduction defect to auditory nerve.