RESUMO
Objective To investigate the effects of aging on the brain stem speech encoding in spontaneous post-menopause women.Methods There were twenty post-menopause women with normal hearing for test and twenty ovariectomized women with normal hearing for contrast.Speech-evoked auditory brainstem response (speech-ABR) was used.The speech syllable /da/ as stimulus sound was transmitted to right ear by the insert earphones in speech-ABR test.Results Response waves of speech-ABR in ovariectomized women were similar to those in post-menopause women, which contained the onset response (peak V and A), the transition (peak C), the frequency following responses (peak D, E and F) and the offset response (peak O).The characteristics of speech-ABR's peak latency and magnitude were similar between the two groups.Except that the bilateral ovariectomized women had a shorter latency of waves O for the transient response (P0.05).After the combination of ovariectomized women and post-menopause women, the age of these subjects was positively correlated with the latency of O wave (P<0.05).Others had no correlation with age in the amplitude and latency of the waves of speech-ABR.Conclusion Aging does not affect on brain stem speech encoding in spontaneous post-menopause women.