I have an AIH , autoimmune hepatitis , treated with Azathioprine. Due to increased liver enzymes, Alat, I had to increase the dose of Azathioprine. I have suffered and still does with tinnitus.Got tinnitus after an Inner Ear infection , 6 years ago.
After increasing Azathioprine my tinnitus got much louder and intrusive. Have any of you , suffering with tinnitus, had the same experience ?
I know that prednisone can increase tinnitus.
Yes I have AIH/PBC firstly had an ear infection which kept coming back then I developed tinnitus in the ear for which I have a hearing aid which does help , now it is coming in the other ear ! I have swapped to budesonide and mycophenolate from prednisone, never got on with anzothopine. Hope you get some help or give a hearing aid a try, best of luck to you.😊
As I have read, in some patients long-term azathioprine therapy could presumably cause the development of nodular regenerative hepatic hyperplasia (NRH) and non-cirrhotic portal hypertension (NCPH). All that patients had abnormal liver tests. May I ask if your liver enzymes decreased after you increased the dose of azathioprine? In some cases, cause and effect can be confused.For me, I have severe tinnitus associated with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) due to nodular regenerative liver hyperplasia and non-cirrhotic portal hypertension on biopsy. My case is not related to taking azathioprine.
I am going to have new blood tests in 3 weeks time, so I dont know if the liver enzyme Alat has gone down. Today I had a mail from my liver doctor who asked me to add Azathioprine 50 mg with 10 mg predisolone until next blood test. I think it is always difficult with tinnitus because there are so many aspects to this. Probably your own experience. But I noticed that my tinnitus increased in volumen when I went from 50 mg to 75 mg. Take Care.
I absolutely agree with you that each case is individual. Ammonia-lowering treatment helped me a little to reduce my tinnitus. It should be noted here that ammonia detoxification is very often impaired in various diffuse liver diseases. Have you had your blood ammonia level checked?
no, I have not had this blood test taken. That s an interesting view.
What is the symptoms of hepatitis encephalopathy ?
My tinnitus is a mystery, which in fact most is. I got this tinnitus after an Inner Ear infection and throat infection, so infection has been involved.
Symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy are very diverse and non-specific depend on the stage of liver disease. For example, it can be chronic fatigue, daytime sleepiness, insomnia at night, impaired attention, muscle twitching in different parts of the body, tremor of the fingers, brain fog. Often these symptoms are overlooked or mistakenly attributed to other causes. If encephalopathy is minimal, then it can only be detected by conducting special psychometric tests, such as a number connection test. Detection of elevated levels of ammonia in the blood helps to make the correct diagnosis.
I have had AIH for 5 years. Was ok and in remission until Feb this year and now having issues. I've not had any issues with tinnitus. Have you talked to your specialist? I've not read all the information about long term issues.
My specialist has up til now not found any evidence that Azathioprine should be ototoxic . But I found a new paper, Azathioprine and Tinnitus - a phase IV clinical study of FDA data. From eHealthMe . I dont know if this is a valid study.
My AIH has been stable with fine Alat Numbers, the last 2-3 years, but suddenly increased from 26 to 105 this summer. Now alat is 70.
I have had AIH for 5 years. Hope you will be fine again.
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