Can COVID Cause Hearing Loss? Study Finds Link Among Young Adults

A new study suggests that a COVID-19 infection could lead to yet another side effect: hearing loss. 

The findings, published recently in the journal eClinical Medicine, revealed that younger adults who tested positive for COVID had a nearly four times higher risk of developing hearing loss than those who didn’t. 

Experts said the research shows that hearing loss may be another symptom of long COVID that physicians should keep an eye on. 

“This study adds important evidence to the conversation about long COVID by highlighting a potential long-term complication that may affect young adults,” Yun Hwan Oh, MD, study author and a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Chung-Ang University in South Korea, told Health. 

“It suggests that the impact of COVID-19 on hearing health could be a significant aspect of long COVID, even in a population that is generally considered to be at lower risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes.”

The Link Between COVID and Hearing

Oh and his team became interested in studying the link between COVID and hearing loss after noticing a lack of large-scale studies examining the association, particularly in young adults. 

“While some case reports and small-scale studies had suggested a potential link, there was insufficient evidence from population-based studies,” he said. 

To fill in the gap, the researchers turned to data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency-COVID-19 National Health Insurance Service database. They pulled information on more than six million people, aged 20 to 39, who tested positive for COVID from 2020 to the end of 2022.

As Oh explained, they chose to focus on younger adults because it “helps isolate the effects of COVID-19 on hearing, as this group typically has fewer age-related hearing issues.” 

After adjusting for factors such as age, sex, household income, medical history, and whether a person was vaccinated against COVID or not, the researchers found that hearing loss was more prevalent among people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID illness. Specifically, participants with COVID had a 3.4 times higher risk of developing hearing loss. 

“The most surprising finding was the magnitude of the increased risk,” Oh said. 

Participants who had been infected with COVID were also 3.5 times more likely to experience sensorineural hearing loss, which occurs when damage occurs to the hair cells in the inner ear, the vestibulocochlear nerve connecting the inner ear to the brain, or the brain’s central processing centers.

Oh said a key takeaway from the study is “the need for increased awareness among healthcare providers and young adults about the potential risk of hearing impairment following COVID-19 infection.”

People who are undecided about whether to get the new COVID vaccine should take this research into consideration, experts said.

“It’s one of the arguments I make for young people getting vaccinated: the data now, in numerous studies, show vaccination—should you get infected—reduces the risk of getting long COVID,” William Schaffner, MD, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Health. “And anything that reduces the risk of getting long COVID really is worthwhile.”

According to experts, there’s no reason to believe that if COVID can indeed cause hearing loss, the symptoms wouldn’t extend to older people as well as younger adults.

More Research Is Needed

The study has several limitations, however. 

“[There is] potential selection bias, as individuals seeking COVID-19 diagnosis [who were included in the study] might be more likely to seek hearing loss diagnosis,” Oh said. He added that the results may not be generalizable to people of other “populations with different healthcare systems, genetic backgrounds, and virus variants.”

The study also doesn’t prove that COVID causes hearing loss but simply shows an association between the two. 

Additionally, researchers don’t have solid answers about why COVID may affect hearing. However, Oh said several theories have been proposed. “These include direct viral damage to the inner ear, microvascular damage, immunologic responses to the cochlea, and the generation of proinflammatory cytokines,” he said.

The new research highlights how much researchers still don’t know about how COVID affects the body, Fernando Carnavali, MD, a physician at the Center for Post-COVID Care at Mount Sinai, told Health. “This points to the fact that this [area of study] is still in its infancy,” he said. 

Still, Schaffner said that if you’re experiencing any unusual symptoms—including hearing loss—after being infected with COVID, it’s worth speaking to your doctor about them if they interfere with your day-to-day life.

As researchers learn more about how COVID affects hearing health, it may become necessary to screen some people for hearing loss as part of their follow-up care after a COVID infection, Oh said.

But for now, experts stressed that the most important thing people need to know—especially going into cold and flu season—is that COVID comes with more risks than acute illness.