I have come across an additional mechanism of action for Ebselen (yay insomnia).
It appears that Ebselen also has voltage dependent calcium channel blocking activity. This explains why it might be especially useful as another "bomb blast pill", which they are recruiting for now.
Apparently, with acute ototoxic or noise exposure the neuro excitability contributes to an influx of calcium ions into the OHC that is large enough to overwhelm the buffering. This can damage the mitochondria and, ultimately, the cell. So, the theory goes, if you can block the influx and attenuate it, you can prevent permanent damage.
This goes into more detail about calcium's role in acute hearing damage:
Tonotopy in calcium homeostasis and vulnerability of cochlear hair cells
Anyway, this does make me wonder about side effects in certain people. For example, Amlodipine blocks similar channels and lowers blood pressure. So if someone already had hypotension or were already on that drug (not sure how much cross reactivity there is) maybe there could be excessive hypotension, for instance or a bradycardia (which is uncommon with Amlodipine and reversible when stopped). The blood pressure / vasodilation effects also might help blood flow in the ear (which is is an additional reason it might help Meniere's).
The drug (Ebselen) has thus far had a good safety profile in phases 1 and 2 of the Meniere's study but I would wonder about certain cardiovascular conditions.
If only there were a good way to determine how much inflammation someone had in more chronic cases (acutely I would assume everyone has a big inflammatory component), they would know how much they could (or not) benefit from this. But if the safety data holds up, I think it would be absolutely worth a try to reduce whatever percentage is inflammatory and if it was relatively negligible, discontinue to concentrate on structural damage.
Incidentally, Sound Pharmaceuticals published an aminoglycoside study less than a week ago, but I will stick that in the Sound Pharmaceuticals thread.