Diabetes mellitus negatively impacts auditory processing abilities, according to a systematic review of studies.
It authors recommended testing auditory perception in people with diabetes for the early detection of auditory processing deficits.
Their review of 17 studies evaluated the impact of diabetes mellitus on auditory perception skills at the central processing level by comparing individuals with diabetes to controls without the condition.
The studies examined auditory perception skills in 1,106 people with diabetes using a range of subjective tests.
Auditory processing skills assessed included temporal resolution (e.g., identifying gaps-in-noise, detecting amplitude modulation, pattern recognition) and speech understanding in noise (e.g., speech intelligibility at varying noise levels) or binaural processing (e.g., dichotic digits listening).
Sixteen of the 17 studies indicated those with diabetes had poorer auditory perception skills compared with those without diabetes, the researchers reported in Ear and Hearing on 3 November 2025.
The effect size for these differences was large in most studies, they said. Age and hearing loss were identified as confounding factors that could affect auditory perception skills.
Longer diabetes duration and diabetes-related complications, such as nephropathy, retinopathy, and cardiovascular disease, were also found to be associated with impaired auditory processing abilities in several studies.
“Diabetes negatively impacts auditory processing abilities, particularly in temporal resolution and speech understanding in degraded listening environments,” the reviewers concluded.
“Clinical testing using simple, reliable auditory perception measures is recommended for the early detection of auditory processing deficits in individuals with diabetes.”
They said clear guidelines for research in this area were also needed to improve demographic matching and ensure study design consistency, enabling more reliable and comparable findings.
The reviewers were Xu Jun Hu from the School of Medical Technology and Information Engineering, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China and independent scholar Chi Chuen Lau from the USA.
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