Cognitive function in Meniere’s disease

ABSTRACT

Meniere’s disease is an otological disease characterized by various symptoms that include episodic peripheral vertigo, sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus, and aural fullness, all of which deteriorate the maintenance of daily activities. We aimed to investigate cognitive function in Meniere’s disease patients and compare their results to those of healthy controls. Eighteen patients diagnosed with definite Meniere’s disease without any psychiatric, neurological or otological comorbidity, and 30 healthy controls with normal cognitive functions were included in the study. General cognitive status, attention, verbal memory, visual memory, executive and visuospatial function were measured by detailed neuropsychological tests in both groups. In the patients with Meniere’s disease, pure-tone hearing thresholds, and speech discrimination scores were also measured. Patients with Meniere’s disease showed lower levels of performance in the trail making test, Oktem verbal memory processes, Rey Complex Figure Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, semantic and phonemic fluency than did healthy controls. In other words, there were deficits in attention, recognition and recall in verbal memory, recall in visual memory, visual spatial construction, and planning skills in patients with Meniere’s disease. Education years and depression scores of participants had a significant effect on cognitive function in all groups. This study is an update and confirmation of the findings of studies showing cognitive impairment in patients with Meniere’s disease. In addition to previous findings, this study found a decrease in executive function performance in patients with Meniere’s disease compared to healthy controls. Unlike previous studies, this study comprehensively addressed all cognitive functions and included a control group. Our results emphasize that executive functions, which are high-level cognitive processes, may affect the compliance of patients with Meniere’s disease treatment and follow-up processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Meniere’s disease
• cognitive impairment
• cognitive function
• cognitive assessment

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Professor Gabor Michael Halmagyi, Dr. Ann Burgess and Dr. Sally Rosengren for contributions with interpretation of data analysis, editing, and revising the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.