COVID-19 could lead to hearing loss
Although it has already been established that COVID-19 survivors can lose their sense of smell and taste, doctors in Britain warn that some could also lose their hearing. Experts at The University of Manchester studied 121 adults at the Wythenshawe Hospital, and eight of the patients reported having trouble hearing two months after being discharged from the hospital. “We already know that viruses such as measles, mumps and meningitis can cause hearing loss and coronaviruses can damage the nerves that carry information to and from the brain,” Kevin Munro, a professor of audiology at The University of Manchester, told the Mirror. Munro added that the virus could also impact pre-existing hearing loss and tinnitus, saying that there is an “urgent need for high-quality studies to investigate the acute and temporary effects of COVID-19 on hearing and the audiovestibular system.”.
I mentioned earlier in this thread that I had cold symptoms starting in early March of this year, when Covid was circulating widely in the south east of England. I came down with the cold symptoms on Friday the sixth of March. On the previous Sunday night, I also had two other strange symptoms begin to show that I do not usually associate with colds: I experienced a profound tingling (or perhaps 'fizzing' that some Covid patients have mentioned) in my limbs at night that roused me from my sleep, and then would subside upon waking, but not allow me to get back to sleep because the tingling would return as soon as I fell asleep again. I think I managed about two hours' sleep a night that week.
The same night I also started to notice tinnitus in both ears, but more strongly in my left ear. I have had brief bouts of it before, but this was a very loud high-pitched ringing sound that lasted more than a month before subsiding. The pitch and volume would also vary at high frequency. I also became very sensitive to sound, and turning the volume right down on anything I listened to. I was worried at the time that it was a permanent thing, temporary ear ringing supposedly being caused by exposure to very loud noise, only I had not been exposed to any loud noises at the time that I developed the tinnitus. The tingling and tinnitus have returned in bouts subsequently.
The following week, when it became apparent that I had a cold, I developed an ache in the left ear, which was exacerbated by coughing. Eventually during the cold, the tingling at night subsided and I was able to get an uninterrupted night's sleep again, but the tinnitus remained for several weeks more. I do remember that one of the early days after I got over the cold, I had the best night's sleep I had had in many years, and I felt so good upon waking, but then the realization of the impending pandemic quickly spoilt the blissful feeling (or the pandemic that had already arrived, except the government had misled the public about where we were in the epidemic trajectory, as that was around the period of peak transmission).
I thought perhaps initially that my symptoms prior to the cold might have been induced by stress, from the news of the pandemic and from work pressures I was facing at the time. Maybe it was a prodome of Covid.
