New York (PTI): It's a study which may come as a shocker to your ears -- sudden loss of hearing can indicate the risk of a heart stroke later in life.

Researchers have based their findings on an analysis of five-year follow-up data on 1,423 patients in Taiwan, who were hospitalised for an acute episode of sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

The study showed they were more than one-and-a-half times more likely to suffer a stroke than a control group of 5,692 patients who had been hospitalised for an appendectomy, the 'Stroke' journal reported.