Hectic day preparing for conference and reading our annual research review - out next week! Here's today's raft of responses...
Thank you! The paper is not without it's flaws, which all are hopefully described in the methodology and discussion. This paper is a sister paper to the economics study I mentioned earlier. A lot of the stats in this study underpin the assumptions in the economic model.
I understand that sorry in trying to reply briefly to a lot of points I'm not going into much detail here. I think it's understanding what some of those other factors are that is the challenege and what their interaction is with the hearing loss and why. We still don't have a way to accurately predict whether someone has tinnitus or not (without talking to them!) if you get what I mean. If we understood all of these contributing factors we might gain that and have attractive targets for durgs/therapeutics.
Probabaly. I think restoring a limb is more likely than hair cells in some ways becuase of how inaccessible the cochlear is, and how do you do it - connect the right haircells to the right nerve endings, etc? Assuming not all are damaged. Huge (fascinating) challenges.
Not at the moment, as there's serveral steps along that journey that are missing;
1. effective subtyping of tinnitus
then...
2. understanding the best therapy for each subtype
I've just read our next Annual Research Review - to be launched at our conference next week, and we have chapters on subtyping, looking at how this could be achieved.
Depends what you mean by community. There's a lot more basic science research than CBT. Basic science also gets more funding then CBT research (rightly so). There is a bit of a schism in the tinnitus research community and it tends to be between basic science/imaging and clinical research. When research conferences run there's often parallell sessions split along these lines. I think if you did a tally of published papers, or papers presented at tinnitus research conferences the number of CBT papers presented/published would be significantly less than the number of biomedical science papers.
If you mean by people who deliver tinnitus services then yes. They will deliver evidence based treatments (hopefully) - currently CBT is tamongst those. Assuming that you mean Audiologists, as they tend to deliver most tinnitus management, they are a long way removed from biomedical research, as Audiologists don't traditionally carry this out - drug development isn't their field - they typically can't prescribe drugs. It is scientists and doctors (ENTs in our case) that will undertake research at this level typically. There are some Audiologists involved in biomedical research but they are the exception rather than the rule.
Apologies if I misinterepted the question.
No! We discuss/debate models a lot, as I'm sure happens here. My favourite current theory/model is the one developed by Dr William Sedley (Full disclosure, he's a member of the BTA PAC and the nephew of our former President, Sir Stephen Sedley) which is here;
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5152595/
I like it as it unifies a number of other models and makes sense to me as to why we keep finding more and more areas of the brian involved in the tinnitus percept. Dr Sedley's paper here;
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221500278X is the most important and interesting tinnitus paper of recent times, IMO. Dr Sedley is working on objective measures of tinnitus and proving his model currently.
BUT I often get 15 minutes to present what tinnitus is what to do about it, etc so for simplicity I present the 'box' model, first published in 'Living with tinnitus and Hyperacusis,' and is included in
www.takeontinnitus.co.uk PLUS I don't have huge confidence to present Dr Sedleys model due to the complexities, and I'm not a neuroscientist! I like how the 'box' model fits with the Eggemont and Baguley theory that tinnitus has an 'ignition' site (anywhere in the auditory pathway) which is then 'maintained,' (deeper in the auditory system).
Others here have developed their own ways of explaining tinnitus, or prefer other models such as the cognitive-behavioural model - which has some efficacy behind it.
We haven't promoted one particular model, as without any having a thorough evidence base, don't feel in a position to do so. If we have time we tend to present a few and allow people to make their own minds up - a bit like I've done here I suppose.
So sorry - a long winded way to say 'no'!
Great this worked for Conan but anecdote isn't evidence. I'm not medically qualified so wouldn't feel in a position to comment on specific cases like this. Worthy of forwarding onto the drug company as a potential route for them to investigate though and see if they are interested in following it up.
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