Baclofen for Tinnitus?

hi guys

i'm just wondering if anyone has tried baclofen?
i've read it was giving some results on hyperacusis

how about tinnitus?


thanks in advance

 

some trials shown that it does not work.

 

how about this study?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22005094

edit:they are talking about l-baclofen and not baclofen itself

is l-baclofen available in the market?

 

I went to see Dr. Michael Seidman, tinnitus specialist. He prescribed me Baclofen, a muscle relaxer. He said it has lowered the volume in a lot of cases. Anyone had any experience with this?

 

It gets used a lot for chronic muscle spasm in MS. Maybe some practitioners are taking the myoclonus contribution to Tinnitus more seriously?

 

It's a GABA-B agonist therefore it might have some effect for t.
I've tried huge doses of the thing, got zero benefit.

 

My research showed me it can cause severe T (but I believe in higher doses)

..I have a whole bottle and never tried it.

If you can manage the side effects, I'd opt for Flexeril instead.

 

Yeah same here. I have some but im too afraid of the effects.

 

Baclofen is a racemic drug (mix of two different isomers). They compete with each other for receptors. There is some research indicating that one of the isomers is useless for tinnitus, and the other one is useful. So, if someone ever produced a drug which contained only the single enantiomer and not the other one, then this might be a great tinnitus suppressor -- but no one has ever produced such a drug commercially, and there would be regulatory hurdles to overcome.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3297816/

 

I just started having tinnitus symptoms last week. I blamed it on the fridge at work first. Only I was off for a week and I still had the ringing in my ears, then I realized I have a problem. I read about it when I was a student but I just never imagine I would be a patient. I have no risk factors. It was very daunting experience.
Anyway, I read some anecdotal studies about baclofen and I have some left over from my last surgery. So I tried one. Nothing happened first and the ringing actually got a bit louder. I was trying to concentrate to read a physics article and suddenly the tinnitus went away. I don't know if it was the concentration or the baclofen but something stopped the ungodly tinnitus. Later that evening, tinnitus returned but it was a lot softer.

I am going to my otolaryngologist and ask him about it. If it is really the baclofen, then I think I maybe okay. I have read the guidelines on tinnitus from American society of otolaryngology and many case studies. So many results are inconclusive. Guess I can only pray or start reading maths and physics articles very intensely.

 

It activates GABA. Tinnitus is associated with low GABA levels and many drugs which activate GABA help reduce tinnitus, like Xanax as an example. Oddly enough, Valium has no effect on tinnitus.

 

Is it possible to get l-baclofen for research purposes?

 

"Baclofen has been suggested to be useful in reducing responses in brainstem hyperacusis"
source: http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/hearing/hyperacusis.htm#treatment

What is brainstem hyperacusis?

 

So maybe it's the difference between GABA-A (most benzos) and GABA-B (baclofen) or something?

I only just read about baclofen yesterday and recalled a psychologist mentioning a long time ago, but she didn't know what it was for, just that some doctor was using it to help some people. I dismissed it because I had no idea about anything back then.

I wonder if the difference in what works for different people is the different genetics we all have. I think until we have a good data set of genetics of people who have tinnitus then we won't find the correlations between us. But most people don't want to do genetic testing I guess? It's only a few hundred dollars now. Obviously privacy is an issue with genetics, but if we could get a template report set up in livewello.com with genes that might be related to all this then maybe forum users could anonymously forward their data for those genes to someone doing research?

 

So has anyone else tried this? Not sure if it would work for me with the kind of tinnitus I have but just curious.