The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Animal models have proven to be a fruitful avenue of research for tinnitus treatment (and I say fruitful in the sense that we’ve learned things – there aren’t currently any tinnitus specific drugs that have made it to market for chronic tinnitus). Many of these drug treatments have focused on drugs for acute onset tinnitus – basically, anything that is protective to the sound detecting cells in the inner ear. The military has trialed N-acetylcysteine in humans, for example.

However, drug therapies for chronic tinnitus are harder to come by. That’s why research that looks for such agents is so promising – it has the potential to help many people who have suffered from tinnitus for a long time. The following is such as study, which used a drug that effects an NMDA receptor blockade:

Chronic tinnitus has no broadly effective treatment. Identification of specific markers for tinnitus should facilitate the development of effective therapeutics. Recently it was shown that glutamatergic blockade in the cerebellar paraflocculus, using an antagonist cocktail was successful in reducing chronic tinnitus. The present experiment examined the effect of selective N-methyl d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor blockade on tinnitus and associated spontaneous brain activity in a rat model.

As always, check out AudioNotch for the latest in tinnitus research news!