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Pharmacological Approaches to Tinnitus Treatment

  • Chapter
Textbook of Tinnitus

Keypoints

1.Available treatments for the management of ­tinnitus are diverse.

2.Although most patients benefit from treatment to some degree a large percentage of them are left untreated and in despair with the notion that “they have to learn to live with their tinnitus”.

3.Currently there is no drug that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) for the treatment of tinnitus. Thus, tinnitus is still a clinically unmet need, and most patients would welcome a drug that abolishes their phantom sound once and for all.

4.There are different forms of tinnitus which probably differ in their response to pharmacological treatment. Thus, even if a specific drug has failed to demonstrate efficacy in controlled clinical trials in a large sample, a beneficial effect in a subgroup of tinnitus patients should not be precluded. At present, most evidence-based pharmacological treatments treat specific comorbidities rather than the core of the disorder itself.

5.There is an urgent need for effective treatment approaches. Since in some individuals, tinnitus causes irritability agitation, stress, depression, insom­nia, and interferes with normal life – leading to suicidal attempts in severe cases – even a drug that produces a small but significant effect would have an enormous therapeutic impact. This review describes strategies currently available for tinnitus pharmacotherapy.

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Abbreviations

EMEA:

European Medicines Agency

RNID:

Royal National Institute for Deaf People (UK)

SSRI:

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

THQ:

Tinnitus handicap questionnaire

SNRI:

Serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors

GABA:

Gamma amino butyric acid

PDE5:

Phosphodiesterase type 5

NMDA:

N-methyl-D-aspartate

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, 1428, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ana Belén Elgoyhen

  2. Departamento de Farmacología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ana Belén Elgoyhen

Authors
  1. Ana Belén Elgoyhen
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  2. Berthold Langguth
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Correspondence to Ana Belén Elgoyhen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USAUSA

    Aage R. Møller

  2. Department of Psychiatry Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Berthold Langguth

  3. BRAI2N/TRI Tinnitus Clinic and Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Antwerp, Wilrijkstraat 10, 2650, Edegem, Belgium

    Dirk De Ridder

  4. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Tobias Kleinjung

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Elgoyhen, A.B., Langguth, B. (2011). Pharmacological Approaches to Tinnitus Treatment. In: Møller, A.R., Langguth, B., De Ridder, D., Kleinjung, T. (eds) Textbook of Tinnitus. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-145-5_78

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