CanWest News Service headline: Childhood obesity increases risk of hearing loss.
Medpage Today headline: Childhood Obesity Appears Linked to Middle Ear Effusion.
CanWest lede: Fat children may be at increased risk of permanent hearing loss from chronic ear infections, new research suggests.
Medpage lede: The average body mass index in a group of children with otitis media with effusion was about 35% higher than among children with no history of ear infection, found researchers here.
CanWest: Obesity can cause inflammation throughout the body, and an earlier study* found that the more a child weighs, the greater the risk of eardrum abnormalities.
*oh wait, there’s no citation
Medpage: Obesity is associated with mild systemic inflammation, accompanied by increases in the concentrations of C-reactive protein, interleukin 6, and other markers of inflammation, the researchers wrote.
CanWest: Over recent decades, rates of OME have been growing, a phenomenon that has been linked to more children in day care, pollution, bottle-feeding and other factors.
[*cough* a phenomenon that has been linked to bad! mothers! *cough*]
Medpage: Factors shown to predispose to the ear infection include upper respiratory infection, age, race, and attendance in day-care centers.
CanWest: Among the children who had ear tubes inserted, 42 per cent were obese.
Medpage: The investigators concluded that the frequency of ventilation tube insertion within the experimental group was not related to obesity, although childhood obesity was significantly higher in the children with otitis media with effusion versus the control group.
Summary by me: In a study comparing 155 kids with otitis media with effusion (OME) to a 118 kids with no history of ear infections (but some childhood illness or other), the former group had a higher percentage of fatties than the latter.
When they separated the kids who did have OME into obese and non-obese groups, they found… no difference in the way they were affected. Oh, and by the way, they used two different measurements of obesity for this. Using one, the obese group was 54 kids, the non-obese, 101. Using the other, the obese group was 30 kids, the non-obese, 125.
So, among OME sufferers in this study, non-obese children are the clear majority. (By one metric, there were more non-obese children in the OME group than children in the control group.) And the disease affects all those children pretty much the same, regardless of their weight and cholesterol levels.
In other news, this other group of children who weren’t prone to ear infections were somewhat less fat, on the whole. And in other news, if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a streetcar.
Conclusion: Childhood obesity increases risk of hearing loss!
Do you see? DO YOU SEE WHY I GET THIS WAY?
