Some prior studies of brainstem audiometry have found illness-specific aberrations, suggesting that this procedure can be of use to clinicians in diagnosing certain psychiatric illnesses.

The study aimed to examine the diagnostic properties of a brain stem audiometry procedure (SD-BERA®) for patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

A blinded study including 12 patients with schizophrenia, 12 patients with bipolar disorder, and 12 healthy controls was performed in 2014/2015. The patients were recruited from psychiatric specialist services and a primary care office in the County of Troms, Norway. The patients and controls were examined with brainstem audiometry. The clinical diagnoses were not known to the researchers who analysed the brain stem audiometry data at the Swedish company SensoDetect. Sensitivity and specificity for each group (compared to healthy controls) was calculated.

The brain stem audiometry procedure had a high degree of sensitivity (1.00), but a lower degree of specificity (0.45) when patients suffering from bipolar disorder were compared to healthy controls. For the diagnosis of schizophrenia, the brain stem audiometry procedure had a high degree of specificity (0.91), but a lower degree of sensitivity (0.33) when patients were compared to healthy controls.

This method may help clinicians by lending support to a clinically suspected diagnosis of schizophrenia. The relatively low specificity for bipolar disorder could suggest that the method needs further development before it can be useful clinically when the diagnosis of bipolar disorder is suspected. Further scientific testing is needed to verify these findings.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.