Gender Difference of Clinical Characteristics in Meniere's Disease

An, Se Young; Son, Hye Ran; Suh, Myung Whan; Rhee, Chung Ku; Jung, Jae Yun

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Meniere's disease (MD) is a clinical cluster of common symptoms by various causes rather than a single disease entity. Many causes such as autoimmune, allergy, vascular insufficiency have been thought to be related with Meniere's disease. We assumed that different pathologic mechanisms have contribution in each gender. With this premise, we compared clinical characteristics between male and female patients to determine if there is any difference indicating heterogeneous underlying pathology.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We reviewed medical records of 61 patients (43 female, 18 male) who were diagnosed as unilateral definite MD and underwent vestibular function test and audiologic evaluation (more than two times of pure tone audiometry during the follow-up period) from October 2005 to December 2011.
RESULTS
The average duration of dizziness in females was longer than in males. In the worst ipsilateral pure tone audiometry, low frequency thresholds were lower in females than in males. Female had lesser hearing difference at all frequencies between the sides and showed more hearing fluctuation than male. There was no significant difference between male and female in the vestibular function test.
CONCLUSION
These results are insufficient to suggest that the pathogenesis of MD differs between the genders. However, some differences between the genders prompt a need for future studies involving more patients.