Thank you so much for posting this link,
@Berik ! I also decided to register on this site, just to post the link in this thread. I read many papers about tinnitus, and I see that the paper you posted is unusually informative.
Here is a link to the study (Nondahl et al.) cited in your paper(Tunkel et al.) (the study where "nearly 50% of patients with significant tinnitus ... improved after 5 years, with 43% of those improved reporting complete resolution):
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1b17/9111dc66129c7c0433824746ba72440c54b7.pdf
One thing to keep in mind regarding
Nondahl et al. study is that it involved mostly adults over the age of 50 at the start of the study (see page 2). Yet, according to Tunkel et al., "The
largest spontaneous improvement is seen with short duration tinnitus,
younger age, and longer intervals between pre- and post-assessment." Some of the patients included in Nondahl et al.'s study were in their 80s and 90s! So younger people can reasonably expect even better prospects than that implied by Nondahl et al. study (i.e., more than 50% improve, with about a quarter completely recovering). Another interesting finding in Nondahl et al.'s study is: "
For every 0.26 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol at baseline, there was a 4.2 percent higher risk of developing tinnitus." So it may make sense to try to lower your cholesterol (assuming tinnitus doesn't cause cholesterol to increase, which could be the case if T causes someone to stop caring about their diet).
Nondahl et al. study also reports results for people who had mild tinnitus at the beginning of the study (these results were not mentioned in Tunkel et al.'s study). Five years later, 39.6% of those patients reported having no tinnitus (see page 8).
The study that suggested "close to a 20% rate of spontaneous improvement" (as quoted in Tunkel at al.) was Gopinath et al. That study was also a study of older adults (over 49 years old).
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...r-Adults-The-Blue-Mountains-Hearing-Study.pdf
Tunkel et al. also reported on the findings of Nyenhuis et al. as follows: "28% of subjects with acute tinnitus (lasting < 6 months) improved spontaneously in a control group that received only educational information."
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...lled_Study/links/5583cab408aefa35fe30d396.pdf
This study reports (on page 6) that 39% of the participants had dropped out. On average, noncompleters were younger than the people who didn't drop out. It is possible that many of those who dropped out had experienced a significant improvement in their T (or even a spontaneous recovery).
The study reported spontaneous improvement in 28% of sufferers. However, I read the study and I had trouble figuring out their horizon - how long did it take for 28% to report improvement. Page 10 seems to imply that their horizon was three months, but I am not sure. It appears that the horizon in this study was definitely less than a year. Hopefully more sufferers experience spontaneous recovery at longer horizons...
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