Incidence of Hypothyroidism in Meniere's Disease

Abstract

Introduction: Meniere's disease is a disorder of the membranous labyrinth of the inner ear manifesting as vertigo, tinnitus, sensory neural hearing loss and aural fullness of known or unknown origin. Some patients may present after years into typical forms. The endocrine disorders, especially hypothyroidism and the factors like inflammation, trauma, otosclerosis, autoimmunity explains the multifactorial causation for the basis of Meniere's disease. Endolymphatic hydrops is the pathologic term named for the defective regulation of endolymph volume with respect to production and absorption. However, hyper production of endolymph cannot be excluded. The cause of Meniers disease is multifactorial so clinical features of repeated attacks of variable duration cannot be explained satisfactorily based on single causation.

Aim: To study the incidence of hypothyroidism in Meniere's disease and to assess the success rate of improvement in subjective symptoms after treatment.

Materials and methods: The study was carried out on total 35 out patients who were clinically diagnosed of Meniere's disease and of these 35 patients, 12 patients were found to have hypothyroidism. All patients with hypothyroidism were treated with oral thyroxin supplements and they were evaluated clinically at 3 weeks, 3 months and 6 months interval for the improvement in subjective symptoms on outpatient basis.

Results: In our study, the subjective improvement of all symptoms was seen in all cases of Meniere's disease with hypothyroidism after 12 weeks of treatment.

Conclusion: The improvement in clinical symptoms after treatment demonstrates an association between Meniere's disease and hypothyroidism which was found to be significant. Hence, clinicians should consider screening patients with Meniere disease for thyroid dysfunction who are not already taking supplements.

Keywords: Autoimmunity; Endolymph; Hydrops; Labyrinth; Pure tone audiometry; Tinnitus; Vertigo.