Covid 19 Can Cause Strange Ear Symptoms

Humans contract and recover from COVID-19; doctors and scientists have observed more unexpected chronic conditions resulting from infection. The case involves long-term issues with one’s Ear due to COVID-19, a state that has been informally dubbed “Covid.”

The name mirrors other chronic long-term health issues associated with COVID-19, including Covid Toe. A new study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts Eye and sheds light on the Covid Ear.As explained in the study’s press report, researchers looked at cellular models of the human ear — as well as actual adult human inner Ear tissue — which had been developed to study internal ear infections like mumps virus, hepatitis viruses, and cytomegalovirus.

After COVID-19 patients began reporting hearing loss, dizziness, and tinnitus (ringing of the ), the scientists applied their earlier research to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, too.They studied how the SARS-CoV-2 virus interacts with inner cells like hair cells, nerve fibers, supporting cells, and neuron insulators known as Schwann cells. In the process, the scientists learned that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is capable of infecting the hair cells of the inner Ear, as well as (to a lesser extent) the Schwann cells.

This may explain why COVID-19 patients experience balance, and head motion problems since the infected hair cells (vestibular) play a role in those processes. It may also account for why some COVID-19 patients lose their hearing; cochlear hair cells (which were not directly studied) also have proteins that allow SARS-CoV-2 to invade them — at least when those cells belong to a close relative of humans, mice. Other tests performed by the researchers on 10 COVID-19 patients also indicated damage to the cochlear hairs.