Do you suffer from ringing in your ears? For millions of people in the UK who do, researchers say they may have found a solution.
Experts are hopeful that a new sound therapy for tinnitus could one day be available as a smartphone app.
The therapy involves patients listening to modified sounds in an effort to disrupt patterns of activity in their brains and quieten the ringing.
The trial, led by Newcastle University and part-funded by RNID, the national charity for deaf people, included 77 patients with tinnitus, which can be caused by hearing loss, certain medications or depression and anxiety.
Tinnitis leaves people with the perception of noises such as buzzing, humming, throbbing or hissing, despite there being no outside sound.
Dr Will Sedley, consultant neurologist and researcher at Newcastle University, said: “At the moment, there aren’t really very good treatments to get rid of the tinnitus sound, and it’s all about helping people disengage and learn to live better with the symptom.”
The researchers made small changes to synthetic musical notes for one group, while other patients were given placebo sounds to listen to, which had been modified to different frequencies.
The groups listened to sounds online for an hour a day over six weeks, before having a three-week break.
They then listened for another six weeks, with the sounds swapped, although patients were not aware which sound was the modified musical note and which was the placebo.
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Dr Sedley said, on average, “people listening to the active ones, but not the placebo ones, during that phase did get a significant quieting of their tinnitus”.
The therapy quietened tinnitus by around 10% on average, which lasted for around three weeks after the treatment finished, the study found.
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Researchers are hopeful that the therapy can be developed further.
Dr Sedley added: “There’s all manner of different modifications we can make to the sounds themselves, or how long a day you listen for.
“If we could build this into the normal, listening to music, and talk radio, podcasts, people are doing anyway, they could rack up hours and hours of listening every day.”
