COVID-19 Associated Anxiety Enhances Tinnitus: A Case Control Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background: The directional nature of the link between anxiety and tinnitus has not been verified. COVID-19 has added stress to involved residents and provided a good opportunity to discover if anxiety/stress plays a causative/promotive role to tinnitus. Methods: A retrospective research design was used to compare the tinnitus clinics between the patients in 2020 under COVID-19 and those from the matching period in 2019. While anxiety was quantified using the Zung’s Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), tinnitus severity was evaluated using the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) questionnaire and the test of minimum masking level (MML). The assessments were repeated after two months of therapy with sound therapy + educational counselling (STEC) or EC alone. Results: A large increase in anxiety was evident in 2020 in both case rate and SAS. The treatment of both methods was less effective in 2020. SAS, THI and MML were all deteriorated after the EC alone treatment in 2020, while an improvement was seen in 2019. Discussion: The differences between years and between treatment methods suggest that EC alone could not counteract the stress by COVID-19 at all, and the stress, if not managed well, can significantly increase the severity of tinnitus and associated anxiety.Conclusions: By using the EC subgroup in virtual control, we conclude that anxiety can serve as a promoting factor to tinnitus. We believe that this is the first study report that confirm the causative/promotive role of anxiety on tinnitus
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".