Associations of Tinnitus Incidence with Use of Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Inhibitors among Patients with Autoimmune Conditions
Overview: Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute, and Atropos Health leveraged Atropos Platform to generate the first retrospective cohort study examining the association of anti-TNFa therapy with tinnitus in patients with autoimmune disorders.
See the full text in Journal of Clinical Medicine special issue, Integration of Clinical and Molecular Studies in Understanding the Pathogenesis of Hearing Loss: From Cause to Cure: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/12/5/1935
Abstract: Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα) may promote neuroinflammation prompting tinnitus. This retrospective cohort study evaluated whether anti-TNFα therapy influences incident tinnitus risk among adults with autoimmune disorders and no baseline tinnitus selected from a US electronic health records database (Eversana; 1 January 2010–27 January 2022). Patients with anti-TNFα had ≥90-day history pre-index (first autoimmune disorder diagnosis) and ≥180-day follow-up post-index. Random samples (n = 25,000) of autoimmune patients without anti-TNFα were selected for comparisons. Tinnitus incidence was compared among patients with or without anti-TNFα therapy, overall and among at-risk age groups or by anti-TNFα category. High-dimensionality propensity score (hdPS) matching was used to adjust for baseline confounders. Compared with patients with no anti-TNFα, anti-TNFα was not associated with tinnitus risk overall (hdPS-matched HR [95% CI]: 1.06 [0.85, 1.33]), or between groups stratified by age (30–50 years: 1 [0.68, 1.48]; 51–70 years: 1.18 [0.89, 1.56]) or anti-TNFα category (monoclonal antibody vs. fusion protein: 0.91 [0.59, 1.41]). Anti-TNFα was not associated with tinnitus risk among those treated for ≥6 months (hdPS-matched HR [95% CI]: 0.96 [0.69, 1.32]) or ≥12 (1.03 [0.71, 1.5]), or those with RA (1.16 [0.88, 1.53]). Thus, in this US cohort study, anti-TNFα therapy was not associated with tinnitus incidence among patients with autoimmune disorders.
Citation: Natarajan N, Batts S, Gombar S, Manickam R, Sagi V, Curhan SG, Stankovic KM. Associations of Tinnitus Incidence with Use of Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Inhibitors among Patients with Autoimmune Conditions. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 2023; 12(5):1935. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12051935