The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

New research on animal models indicates that a commonly used drug, Furosemide, may be effective in treating tinnitus:

Six-week treatment window

Mulders’ research suggests furosemide is only therapeutically effective in the first six weeks after hearing loss, when auditory neurons appear hyper-excitable.

“There is possibly a therapeutic window for people with early onset tinnitus who might respond to treatment that affects the spontaneous firing rate of the auditory nerve,” Mulders said.

Mulders conducted the research using her well-established experimental animal model for tinnitus research, which involved guinea pigs deafened on one side.

To identify animals demonstrating tinnitus after the acoustic injury, Mulders studied the sensitivity of their natural alarm reaction to a sudden loud noise, the startle pulse in the gap pre-pulse inhibition (GPPI) test.

Silence in the time before the startle pulse reduced the startle reaction evoked by the loud noise in control animals. Yet, some animals with hearing loss did not seem to behave in this way.