Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Hearing Recovery From Noise-Induced Temporary Hearing Threshold Shifts in Mice

Hypothesis: Cigarette smoking may potentiate noise-induced hearing loss. Background: Many epidemiological studies have shown that cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for noise-induced hearing loss. Methods: BALB/c mice were exposed to passive smoking for 2 h/d for 2 weeks before exposure to 110-dB sound pressure level white noise for 3 hours once. Hearing was assessed via the auditory brainstem response with tone-burst stimulation and distortion product otoacoustic emissions before and at 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after noise exposure. Oxidative stress and hypoxia were assessed by immunostaining with 8-oxoG and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha, respectively. Results: Control mice unexposed to both smoking and noise and mice exposed to smoking only showed no shift in hearing threshold. In contrast, mice exposed to noise only or smoking plus noise showed abrupt increases in hearing threshold. In mice exposed to noise only, hearing threshold returned to prenoise levels after 2 weeks. However, in mice exposed to smoking plus noise, the loss of hearing was significantly higher, and hearing threshold did not return to the pre-exposure levels until 4 weeks later. Positive staining with 8-oxoG and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha were observed in the inner ear of the smoking-only and smoking-plus-noise group similar to noise-only mice, whereas no positive staining was observed in control group. Conclusion: These results indicate that cigarette smoking may potentiate the harmful effects of noise on hearing and disturb the recovery mechanism in the cochlea.