Study: Prevalence of New-Onset Tinnitus after COVID-19 Vaccination Compared with Other Vaccinations. Image credit: Miss Ty/Shutterstock The increasing prevalence of vaccine hesitancy and anxiety about side effects of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) of the COVID-19 vaccine has become a major global health concern. As a result, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been extensive research into the adverse effects of the COVID-19 vaccination. Recently, tinnitus has received attention as a possible side effect of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. After vaccination against COVID-19, patients have reported the development of life-changing tinnitus, which can be accompanied by hearing loss, thus drastically impairing the patient’s quality of life.
About the study
In the current study, researchers determined the proportion of patients who developed new tinnitus within 21 days of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine compared to those who received the flu, pneumococcal polysaccharide, and Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis). The TriNetX Analytics Network, a federal health research network, collected de-identified electronic health record (EHR) data from more than 78 million patients at 45 health care organizations (HCOs) in the US. These data were used to create a retrospective cohort design. In the US Collaborative Network of the TriNetX platform, there were 78,058,186 patients with any EHR. Five groups of patients were identified: (1) those who received the first dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine between December 15, 2020 and March 1, 2022, (2) those who received the second dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine between December 15, 2020 and March 1 2022, (3) those who received the flu vaccine between January 1, 2019 and December 1, 2019, (4) those who received the Tdap vaccine between January 1, 2019 and December 1, 2019, and (5) those who received the pneumococcal vaccine between January 1, 2019 and December 1, 2019. Dates corresponding to the COVID-19 vaccination group ranged from the first day of US COVID-19 vaccination to a hypothetical date that provided a window of more than three weeks prior to data collection. To rule out the possibility of vaccination against COVID-19 in these three groups, three additional joint vaccination groups were evaluated during 2019. The team defined a vaccination event as the first time a patient met the criteria in a specific time window, implying that the first dose of COVID-19 was evaluated in the first dose cohort. The second COVID-19 dose group experienced exactly two documented vaccination procedures. A diagnosis of tinnitus in a patient with no prior history of the condition was reported as new-onset tinnitus.
Results
The study results showed that within 21 days of receiving the first and second doses of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, 0.038% of 2,575,235 participants and 0.031% of 1,477,890 participants were diagnosed with tinnitus. After the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, there was a reduced chance of experiencing tinnitus compared to the first dose. Compared to the flu group, tinnitus was reported by 998,991 flu vaccine patients and 1,009,935 first-dose COVID-19 vaccine patients. In addition, there were 720 newly diagnosed cases of tinnitus in the influenza group and 374 cases in the first-dose COVID-19 group. Compared to the Tdap cohort, there were a total of 444,708 patients with Tdap vaccine and 444,721 patients with first-dose COVID-19 vaccines. These included 314 cases of new tinnitus diagnosis in the Tdap group and 133 new cases of tinnitus in the first-dose COVID-19 group. In the case of the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine group, the team found 153,344 pneumococcal vaccine patients compared with 154,825 patients who received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Among them, there were 132 cases of newly diagnosed tinnitus in pneumococcal vaccine patients, while 79 cases of tinnitus occurred in the first-dose COVID-19 group. Comparing the second-dose COVID-19 group, 1,516,282 patients received the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,516,282 patients received the first dose. These included 465 cases of new tinnitus diagnosis in the second-dose COVID-19 group and 577 new cases of tinnitus in the first-dose COVID-19 group. Overall, the study findings showed that patients were more likely to experience tinnitus after receiving Tdap, flu and pneumococcal vaccines than after the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
