Has Anyone Taken Prednisone for Acoustic Trauma and Then Later Developed Tinnitus or Got a Spike?

Hello everyone

I have been trying to get to the bottom of a question for a couple of weeks now, but I still can't seem to get a straight answer. So I'm just going to ask a simply question.

Has anyone on here ever took prednisone for an acoustic trauma, and a day or two later either developed tinnitus, or their tinnitus started to get worse or spiked up?

I understand that this medication is prescribed by ENT's to help prevent this from happening, and to preserve hearing. And I know that it is a commonly prescribed medication for a lot of health issues.


Please let me know

Thank You
Louie
Quietatnight

 

It is not given as freely in the UK and only for arthritis and respiratory problems but it does come with its own problems.
It is an anti-inflammatory and the only one safe for me to take.

It's something you need to talk to your doctor about.
Love glynis

 

Yes, every time I've taken it for acoustic trauma my tinnitus has spiked but gone down to baseline shortly after finishing the medication.

 

No, never made my tinnitus worse. Unfortunately because the drug does so many things to the body, its also pretty difficult to work out why the drug reduces Tinnitus for some people while they are taking it.

 

By "shortly after finishing", do you mean a few days or a few weeks?

 

I know this is a little old, but I was prescribed Prednisone 2 days after my acoustic trauma. Started taking it on the morning of day 3 (about 60 hours after the initial trauma). The tinnitus appeared two days into the initial dose. I am unsure if the tinnitus was brought on by the Prednisone, or if it was just late-onset. I have had my T for almost two months now.

I know that Prednisone helps a lot of people, so I don't want to scare anyone into not getting it. It had some pretty bad psychological side effects on me too, which I had heard was a little rare but not unheard of.

 

Hello all!

Every time I take Prednisone, my tinnitus spikes considerably, a lot in fact, and then when finishing the treatment with a bit of time it gets back to its baseline or even a bit lower than before.

Anyone who also has this effect with Prednisone?

Or anyone here whose tinnitus was permanently increased by Prednisone?

Thanks a lot!

 

Are you taking prednisone for another condition? If not, then you really shouldn’t be taking it as you are. Prednisone is a strong drug with many known side effects and it shouldn’t be abused under the false illusion that it is required for exposures to everyday sounds. It is a bad habit that is learned on here and it needs to be stamped out.

It should only be taken under the supervision of a Dr if they deem it necessary. The only time it is usually given is if one is exposed to an event that causes an immediate auditory threshold shift. The usual culprits are things like explosives, gunfire, slaps to the ear, a headphone blast, etc.

 

Headphones blast, car horn 1 meter away, somebody screaming in the ear... Prednisone is advocated here because ENTs don't, people are taking their lives and health into their own hands when nobody in the medical community will step up and help.

What are we supposed to do, when faced with a noise trauma, which is our enemy? I know anxiety plays into it, but our ears have been compromised, it's a catch 22.

 

Daniel, there are people on here taking prednisone like they are vitamin pills. There is a time and a place when prednisone may be appropriate, but this is best left to the Drs and not people on a forum.

Many of the cases I read on here can’t really be considered as acoustic traumas, but this doesn’t stop people taking prednisone willy nilly. It’s crazy how obsessed people have become with it and it needs to stop.

 

Thanks a lot @Ed209!

I was taking them because due to work they invited me to a very loud bar, with music high volume for 2 hours and I didn't have hearing protection at all. I used Prednisone for 2 days but stopped, don't really know what to do as I didn't really experience fullness in the ear so maybe with antioxidants I can protect from any possible damage done.

 

Yeah Prednisone destroyed the muscel in my legs and I'm only now just gertige it back after nearly 12 months. It also made me gain 10kgs and really damaged my mental health.

 

Who decided whether the cases you read on this forum are considered an acoustic trauma? Was it someone with a medical degree?

 

How long were you taking steroids for?

Please let us know in your time... It's important as most people here take them for 5 days or so.

 

How many times have you taken prednisone?

 

So in general the answer to this is "yes", because there have been actual research studies conducted, and lots of the people in the research got tinnitus.

Prednisone seems to reduce the frequency or severity of tinnitus to some extent, if it is administered very quickly (within hours), in some cases, and in some studies only. That is a lot of "ifs", so, I have to assume there are many more people walking around who have tinnitus after taking prednisone, than people who took prednisone and completely eliminated their tinnitus.

These studies break down into two general boxes: studies which found no effect from the prednisone, and studies which found some effect. The one thing that all the studies in the latter group have in common, is that the extent of the beneficial effect was based entirely on how quickly prednisone was administered, and the window there seems to be "minutes to a day or two". After that it's probably worthless and possibly directly counterproductive because corticosteroids are stimulating and increase anxiety load while making sleep more difficult.

Note that the vast majority of the research is looking at SSHL, and not acoustic trauma; there may or may not be critical similarities there.

Here is an acoustic trauma study which concluded that prednisone helped with hearing recovery to a modest degree, but did not have any impact on tinnitus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11318462

A statement from this document is pretty telling, this is treatment suggestions for acoustic trauma:

The bottom line is that I think this forum is weirdly hung up on prednisone, because there isn't actually much data indicating it does anything useful for us, especially after the first 48 hours, and there's plenty of reasons to think it's not the safest drug in the world, like this account of a man who had a psychotic break on methylprednisone and killed his wife or this analysis which speaks to the risk factor:

tl;dr Prednisone isn't especially likely to cause a psychotic break, but that's a thing that can happen, and it's also not very likely to help your ears.

 

7 days.

 

7 days, wow....glad I've been reading this thread.
That's really scary... I hope you're on the mend and regaining your strength.

 

Yeah, I'll be alright, I just think people need to realize this drug is really fucking serious shit. It personally never helped my tinnitus, but it did help with preventing hyperacusis.