Associate Professor Shaowen Bao, from the physiology department at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, has discovered possible links between COVID shots and the emergence of tinnitus.
Thousands of people say they’ve developed tinnitus after they were vaccinated against Covid. While there is no proof yet that the vaccines caused the condition, theories for a possible link have surfaced among researchers.
Shaowen Bao, an associate professor in the physiology department of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, believes that ongoing inflammation, especially in the brain or spinal cord, may be to blame.
Bao, a longtime tinnitus sufferer and a representative of the American Tinnitus Association’s scientific advisory board, has studied tinniuts for more than a decade.
A Facebook group of people who developed tinnitus after getting a Covid vaccine convinced Bao to look into the possible link. He ultimately surveyed 398 of the group’s participants.
The cases tended to be severe. One man told Bao that he couldn’t hear the car radio over the noise in his head while driving.
Along with ringing in their ears, participants reported a range of other symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, vertigo, ear pain, anxiety and depression. Significantly more people first developed tinnitus after the first dose of the vaccine, compared with the second.
This suggests “that the vaccine is interacting with pre-existing risk factors for tinnitus. If you have the risk factor, you will probably get it from the first dose,” Bao said.
He is still analyzing the results and has not published any preliminary findings.
According to a new report, confidence in childhood vaccines has dipped by 44 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic, while confidence remained steady in China, India, and Mexico.
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