Ménière's Disease and Underlying Medical and Mental Conditions: Towards Factors Contributing to the Disease.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: To investigate the relation of Ménière's disease (MD) with medical comorbidity or mental conditions.

PROCEDURES: Demographic data, medical and mental comorbidities were retrospectively collected and compared from 3 groups of 30 patients each: a group with patients with definite MD, a second one with patients with vestibulopathies other than MD (non-Ménière's vertigo, NMV) and a third one with patients without any vestibular symptoms (control). The level of significance was set at 0.05.

RESULTS

The prevalence of mental conditions was 26.7, 23.3 and 6.7% for the MD, the NMV and the control group, respectively. Medical comorbidity was found in 80% of patients in the MD, 63% in the NMV and 20% in the control group. Arthritis was encountered in 8 patients with MD, 3 with NMV and none from the control group. The differences in prevalence of mental disease, comorbidities and arthritis between the MD and the control group were statistically significant (p = 0.02, p < 0.001 and p = 0.008, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Psychological conditions play an important role in patients with MD. The significantly increased prevalence of arthritis in the MD group suggests an inflammatory/autoimmune background as a contributing factor to the disease.