@attheedgeofscience - what do you mean by no standardised treatment. Does your research lead you to believe there will be some forms of treatments for some tinnitus sufferers? Please tell me there is some hope...
There will be no mass market standardized treatment for tinnitus for the foreseeable future. That means there will no drug or medical intervention which will be able to reliably treat with good results a sizeable part of the tinnitus population (incl. people with chronic tinnitus). If you - or someone - had asked the same question, say, two years ago, then probably there was a different sense of optimism: the beginning of the phase-II trial of the QUIET-1 study was imminent and AM-101 was well into phase-III (although on a slightly weak basis one could argue i.e. it was a subgroup of patients who had been shown to benefit).
But all that has changed: there seems to be problems with the reliability of the animal models that were built to test efficacy of tinnitus during the past decade (read: method of induction of tinnitus i.e. aspirin vs noise, GAP detection, and possibly now also problems with tinnitus-resistant animals - see paper by Prof. Tzounopoulos on HCN channels and GLAST gene paper by Prof. Cederroth; result is that better/more reliable models are needed). There is also a problem with funding of the pharma companies that have actually taken their research to a clinical stage (probably because the chance of failure is relatively high): the whole Pittsburgh Kv-channel community is suffering from this; so are other researchers looking into this field of research. The specs of AM-102 remain to be seen, but, given the financially delicate Auris Medical has found itself in, then I cannot help but wonder if we will see delays on this front as well (and in any event, it is not known what the patient profile will be for the drug).
So: there will be nothing coming to your rescue in the near future (possibly for quite a number of years, in fact)? Is there hope? Well, it depends on what your criteria for hope is I suppose. It also depends a bit on the size of your wallet, your willingness to experiment, and your "luck". As it happens, there is quite a bit of niche research going on in relation to curative (read: "treatment") investigations of tinnitus - to name a few:
- CR Neuromodulation
- Electrical stimulation of the ear
- rTMS
- Cold laser therapy
- HIFU
The overall problem encountered with these therapies is that a specific patient profile needs to be identified - and that's no easy task with a subjective condition. That's why I write "luck" in the paragraph above - because you need just that: luck! Diagnostics for a condition such as tinnitus is as important as the drugs themselves. At this point, HIFU is probably the most serious intervention offered to tinnitus sufferers: there is a reliable screening with high-resolution EEG scans which confirm (or reject) a diagnosis of thalamocortical dysrhythmia. With a positive confirmation, the patient can likely be treated. Cost: CHF 2,200 (for screening) + CHF 32,000 (for intervention) if I recall correctly. Add to that a 6-12 months waiting list as Prof. Jeanmonod is the only neurosurgeon in the world who performs this type of intervention. Another example might be the relatively few people who suffer from autoimmune hearing loss: here stem cells (even simply IV-injected) are known to work really well for reversing the loss of hearing thresholds (no studies on tinnitus, however - just one anecdotal account).
Is there more hope? Well, theoretically yes. If the +1 million annual visitors of this forum would make the incredibly small effort to just rate the Frontiers Research Topic via the social media then that would greatly increase the chance of winning the sponsored conference and promote tinnitus research. Whether that "theoretical yes" will turn into a "practical yes" is probably less likely. As I have a significant amount of experience with advocacy, I would say that chance of the combined tinnitus community ever contributing with a small click of the mouse button is about as likely to occur as achieving lasting peace in the Middle East (or finding an ice cube in the Sahara Desert on a hot afternoon).
Member
