Peace at last. A new treatment has shown promise for taming tinnitus, a ringing or grating sound which affects one in 10 people.
Existing treatments are limited to behavioural programmes that help patients better tolerate the condition or to drastic and risky surgery involving electrical implants, such as deep brain stimulation.
The new treatment disrupts synchronised brain signals thought to be responsible for the unwanted ringing. It does this by feeding pulses of sound into a patient鈥檚 ear and alternating, a moment later, with mild electrical pulses to the neck and face. A portable device delivers the sound through earphones and the pulses to electrodes taped to the skin.
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In a trial, 20 patients with somatic tinnitus, a common form, used the device for 30 minutes a day for a month. All 20 also unknowingly trialled a control sham treatment where they only received sound signals.
Symptoms subside
The sham treatment made no difference. With the real treatment, two patients reported that symptoms disappeared completely. Eleven others said the volume or pitch of the unwanted sounds waned and became less harsh. Loudness fell on average by 15 decibels from a baseline of 54 decibels.
A limitation is that the only beneficiaries may be patients who are already able to ease symptoms through physical actions such as clenching their jaws or flexing their necks, movements that can then help determine the best position for the electrodes.
of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and head of the team developing the treatment, says up to 80 per cent of patients may do this. But other researchers say it鈥檚 only around 20 per cent.
鈥淭he trial potentially paves the way for a minimally invasive treatment,鈥� says of Newcastle University Medical School. 鈥淏ut the main outstanding question is the extent to which the findings will generalise to different forms of tinnitus,鈥� he says.
