Does otitis media affect later language ability? A prospective birth cohort study

Purpose The aim of the study was to examine whether otitis media (OM) in early childhood has an impact on language development in later childhood.

Methods We analyzed data from 1,344 second-generation (Generation 2) participants in the Raine Study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort established in Perth, Western Australia, between 1989 and 1991. OM was assessed clinically at 6 years of age. Language development was measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Revised (PPVT-R) at 6 and 10 years of age and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Third Edition at 10 years of age. Logistic regression analysis accounted for a wide range of social and environmental covariates.

Results There was no significant relationship between bilateral OM and language ability at 6 years of age (β = −0.56 [−3.78, 2.66], p = .732). However, while scores were within the normal range for the outcome measures at both time points, there was a significant reduction in the rate of receptive vocabulary growth at 10 years of age (PPVT-R) for children with bilateral OM at 6 years of age (β = −3.17 [−6.04, −0.31], p = .030), but not for the combined unilateral or bilateral OM group (β = −1.83 [−4.04, 0.39], p = .106).

Conclusions Children with OM detected at 6 years of age in this cohort had average language development scores within the normal range at 6 and 10 years of age. However, there was a small but statistically significant reduction in the rate of receptive vocabulary growth at 10 years of age (on the PPVT-R measure only) in children who had bilateral OM at 6 years of age after adjusting for a range of sociodemographic factors.