Evaluation of hearing in patients with familial Mediterranean fever

Abstract

Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is a common and well-understood hereditary periodic fever syndrome. Hereditary periodic fever syndromes include a group of multisystem diseases characterized by recurrent fever attacks with inflammation affecting skin, joints, and some other tissues. These are FMF, tumor necrosis factor receptor, tumor necrosis factor receptor associated periodic syndrome, hyperimmunglobulinemia D syndrome, Muckle-Wells syndrome, and familial cold urticaria. In literature, it is determined that some of these diseases cause hearing loss. In light of the foregoing, we thought that FMF patients may have the same type of subclinical hearing loss and, therefore, the hearing ability of these patients was evaluated with otoacoustic emission and high frequency audiometry tests. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.