Effects of age on the distortion product otoacoustic emission growth functions.

Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) is thought to result from age-related degeneration (aging) of the cochlea plus the cumulative effects of extrinsic damage (noise and other ototoxic agents) and intrinsic disorders (e.g. systemic diseases). Previous studies have implicated dysfunction of the hair cells (sensory presbycusis) as the principal mechanism of age-related hearing loss. However, recent evidence from quiet-reared gerbils suggests that cochlear aging results primarily from atrophy of the stria vascularis, which is associated with diminished endocochlear potential (EP), spiral ganglion atrophy, and a relatively flat audiometric loss, termed metabolic presbycusis. Because it is not currently possible to measure EP directly in the clinical setting, we wondered if cochlear metabolic dysfunction might be evidenced indirectly from existing clinical tests, specifically, the input-output (IO) growth function of the distortion product (DP) otoacoustic emissions in relation to behavioral hearing threshold levels (HTL). We anticipated finding discordance between the IO functions and HTL with either a greater decline with age in HTL than in IO functions if an age-related metabolic dysfunction of the cochlea was operant, or a greater loss of IO function than HTL if outer hair cell dysfunction was the dominant pathology. To address this supposition we analyzed existing auditory data from a large cohort of adults to determine the change with age in three aspects of the DP IO function: area under the curve, threshold, and slope. The analyses demonstrated a greater effect of age on HTL than on the DP IO measures. This effect supports the hypothesis that strial dysfunction is a substantive factor in cochlear aging. The etiology and mechanisms for this dysfunction are conjectural at present.