According to a new longitudinal study, frequent use of painkillers, including acetaminophen and ibuprofen, is associated with a higher risk of developing persistent tinnitus in women.
Thexjmtzyw study, published Monday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, looked at data from more than 69,000 women in order to see if long-term use of over-the-counter pain medication could be contributing to the risk of tinnitus.
According to the study, while high-dose aspirin has been linked to tinnitus previously, there is little data on whether long-term use of lower dose medications is connected to tinnitus.
Tinnitus is a term for a persistent ringing or buzzing in the ears, and is generally more prevalent in older adults. While it is fairly common, it can have a range of severity, with some experiencing ringing that disrupts their lives significantly.
According to a 2019 Statistics Canada health report, around a third of adult Canadians experienced tinnitus in the previous year, with around seven per cent categorizing the problem as “bothersome.”
For this new study, researchers used data from the Nurses Health Study II, a long-term study that sought to understand the risk factors for chronic disease in women.
Out of this cohort, the study looked at data from 69,455 women aged 31-48 years between 1995 to 2017. Women answered various health-related questions once every two years to track their health over a long period.
Researchers found 10,452 cases of persistent tinnitus in the cohort.
When comparing those cases to the women’s self-reported painkiller usage, researchers found that among all women, frequent use of acetaminophen was associated with higher risk of tinnitus.
Frequent use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) other than aspirin, a category which includes drugs like ibuprofen, were also associated with a higher risk of tinnitus. For the study, “frequent use” was defined as four to seven days per week.
“Frequent NSAID use and frequent acetaminophen use were associated with higher risk of incident persistent tinnitus among all women, and the magnitude of the risks tended to be greater with increasing frequency of use,” the study stated.
When it came to aspirin usage specifically, the study found that those who were using low-dose aspirin frequently did not have an elevated risk of tinnitus.
When it came to moderate-dose aspirin, frequent use was associated with a higher risk of tinnitus in women up to 60 years of age, but not among those older than that.
The study didn’t look at what could be causing the increased risk of tinnitus, so it’s not yet known whether the use of painkillers is a cause of tinnitus or is another side effect of something unknown.
“Our results suggest analgesic users are at higher risk for developing tinnitus and may provide insight into the precipitants of this challenging disorder, but additional investigation to determine whether there is a causal association is needed,” the study stated.
One major limitation of the study is that the majority of the women involved in the study were white women, meaning more data is needed on non-white women and men.
