Drug treatments for tinnitus

Many of the drug treatments that are presently in use for tinnitus are aimed at either the cochlea, e.g. using intratympanic injections of gentamicin, dexamethasone or lidocaine, or the CNS using systemic delivery. Earlier benzodiazepines and anticonvulsants have been used and more recently, antidepressants have been introduced, partly in an attempt to treat the emotional aspect of tinnitus. The fact that there are many different forms of tinnitus with different and often multiple causes and that the pathophysiology is poorly understood, are obstacles to finding effective treatments. This situation has been exacerbated by the lack of clinical trials to formally test even some of the most commonly used drugs, as well as a lack of preclinical studies to investigate novel agents. It is suggested that the animal models of tinnitus that have been developed could be used to screen potential anti-tinnitus drugs as a preliminary step before conducting clinical trials.