You’re living with tinnitus and you’ve learned to adjust your life to it. In order to tune out the persistent ringing, you always leave the TV on. The loud music at happy hour makes your tinnitus much worse so you avoid going out with your coworkers. You make appointments routinely to try out new therapies and new treatments. Over time, you simply fold your tinnitus into your everyday life.
The main reason is that tinnitus has no cure. But that could be changing. A study published in PLOS Biology appears to give hope that we may be getting closer to a lasting and effective cure for tinnitus. Until then, hearing aids can be really helpful.
The Specific Causes of Tinnitus Are Not Clear
Tinnitus typically is experienced as a ringing or buzzing in the ear (though, tinnitus could manifest as other sounds too) that do not have an external cause. Tinnitus is very common and millions of individuals cope with it to some degree.
It’s also a symptom, generally speaking, and not a cause unto itself. In other words, something causes tinnitus – there’s an underlying issue that creates tinnitus symptoms. One reason why a “cure” for tinnitus is elusive is that these underlying causes can be difficult to narrow down. There are a number of reasons why tinnitus can occur.
True, most people attribute tinnitus to hearing loss of some sort, but even that relationship is unclear. Some people who have tinnitus do have hearing loss but some don’t.
Inflammation: a New Culprit
Research published in PLOS Biology outlined a study led by Dr. Shaowen Bao, an associate professor of physiology at the Arizona College of Medicine in Tuscon. Mice who had noise-induced tinnitus were experimented on by Dr. Bao. And what she and her team found points to a tinnitus culprit: inflammation.
Scans and tests done on these mice showed that the regions of the brain responsible for listening and hearing typically had significant inflammation. This suggests that some damage is taking place as a result of noise-related hearing loss which we presently don’t understand because inflammation is the body’s reaction to injury.
But this discovery of inflammation also leads to the possibility of a new kind of treatment. Because inflammation is something we know how to deal with. When the mice were given drugs that inhibited the observed inflammation reaction, the symptoms of tinnitus went away. Or it became impossible to detect any symptoms, at least.
Does This Mean There’s a Pill For Tinnitus?
If you take a long enough view, you can most likely look at this research and see how, one day, there might easily be a pill for tinnitus. Imagine if you could just pop a pill in the morning and keep tinnitus at bay all day without needing to turn to all those coping mechanisms.
That’s definitely the goal, but there are several huge hurdles in the way:
- First, these experiments were conducted on mice. Before this strategy is considered safe for people, there’s still a significant amount of work to do.
- The precise cause of tinnitus will differ from person to person; whether all or even most instances of tinnitus are connected to some kind of inflammation is still hard to identify.
- We need to be sure any new approach is safe; these inflammation blocking medicines will need to be tested over time to rule out side effects and any potential concerns.
So, a pill for tinnitus might be a long way off. But it’s no longer impossible. That’s considerable hope for your tinnitus down the road. And, of course, this approach in managing tinnitus is not the only one currently being explored. The cure for tinnitus gets closer and closer with every discovery and every bit of new knowledge.
What Can You do Now?
For now, individuals with tinnitus should feel hopeful that in the future there will be a cure for tinnitus. There are modern treatments for tinnitus that can produce genuine results, even if they don’t necessarily “cure” the root issue.
Some approaches include noise-cancellation devices or cognitive therapies designed to help you ignore the sounds connected to your tinnitus. Hearing aids frequently provide relief for many individuals. You don’t have to go it alone despite the fact that a cure is likely several years away. Finding a treatment that works can help you spend more time doing things you love, and less time thinking about that buzzing or ringing in your ears.
References
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000307
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/brain-inflammation-identified-potential-target-treat-tinnitus