Dimethyl Sulfoxide Therapy in Subjective Tinnitus of Unknown Origin

Have been reading up about dimethyl-sulfoxide for tinnitus. Has anyone tried it? Did it help?

What the Study Says:

Dimethyl sulfoxide therapy in subjective tinnitus of unknown origin.
Caro AZ.

Abstract
In fifteen patients affected by essential nonvibratory tinnitus, local applications in the external auditive canal of 2 ml medicated DMSO spray were made. The spray solution contained DMSO integrated with anti-inflammatory and vasodilatory substances. This application was repeated every four days for a month. At the same time each patient was administered a daily intramuscular injection of a preparation that contained DMSO and a vasodilatory component. The therapeutic effect was evaluated through the subjective modification of the symptom and functional tests of the auditory system. Of the fifteen patients treated, the tinnitus symptom completely disappeared in nine, and did not return during a one-year observation period. The patient's symptoms diminished in two cases, and in four cases the permanent tinnitus became occasional, triggered principally by environmental cold. It is important to note that among the concomitant signs, the five patients with vertigo noted improvement. Hypacusis diminished in three of the six patients affected. Insomnia disappeared in eight and diminished in seven cases. The rise in the average tympanic membrane temperature from 36.8 degrees C before to 37.9 degrees C after treatment was noteworthy. This could indicate an improvement of the blood flow in the inner ear.

 

The study is from 1975 I might add.

 

Yes I know...but people still had tinnitus in 1975....I haven't been able to find out any new study about this, that is why I asked in the forum. The results was amazing! - why haven't this been followed up?

 

As always be careful...this study from 2007 says DMSO based ( its a common carrier) sprays and drops could be toxic to hair cells at concentrations over 6%.
We are all looking for peace but don't make it worse in desperation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2262105/

 

Yes in rats...but the succsess rate on this drug is awesome....100% of the people taking DMSO had either their tinnitus dissepear for good or lowered..gimme another drug that have this result in a study....I ask again why in gods name have this not been followed up by anyone and where can I get my hands on it? - more or less a cure for tinnitus if the study is to believe....but there is no money is a cure, guess they want us on drugs for the rest of our life instead when that time comes..

http://books.google.com/books?id=mLA...20dmso&f=false

 

https://www.drdavidwilliams.com/stop-ringing-in-the-ears-dmso

 

Its very interesting.
Wikipedia (that font of all things true) mentions a death of a lady in Ireland who used a DMSO cream.
As always its likely to be more complicated...like they forgot to see she was shot whilst using the cream
There must be a reason this line of research has been abandoned and not studied further.
Maybe the moderators could ask one of their Tinnitus medical expert contacts ?
Would be good to know.
Thanks for flagging up anyway.
Hope today is a quiet one for you...

 

Seems safer than trobalt Such a small sample though. I can't believe that only 15 people have tried it in the last 40 years after results like that.

 

I'm a chemist (not pharmacist) and I'd say that any thing with DMSO in it has not been followed up with because it's not something you want in your body, it is particularly problematic for your kidneys.

 

Damn shame! The stuff had a 100% success rate, within the small sample, of eliminating or alleviating tinnitus. It deserved further research and maybe modification in the last 42 years.

 

everything is bizzare. The title, the method of adminstration, the result..

 

This has already been posted https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...n-subjective-tinnitus-of-unknown-origin.8643/

 

Oh yeah for sure, DMSO is the solvent, it has nothing to do with the drug; it's the water to your coffee. It is a fairly heavy duty solvent but there are lots of other ones that could be tried and the solubility problems of drugs have been largely overcome by micelles - they probably just ran out of funding

 

Do you know the name of the active drug component? Does it exist in any other form, as far as you're aware?

 

What about MSM? I know you can take it orally, but does anyone know of any studies where it's been injected like this?

 

Is it for acute tinnitus ?

 

Could we replicate this experiment? Assuming this is true it's extremely promising.

 

I'm curious as to whether anyone has read the paper. This is a poor study.

Here are some facts:

1) It's from a special issue from a conference DMSO so it wasn't published in a regular issue of the journal. In many cases, papers in this situation do not undergo the regular peer review process (though it isn't clear if that is true in this case).

2) It is from 1975 and has been cited a whopping 3 times: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=14132097253944513978 For comparison, McLean et al was published in February and has been cited 5 times: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=4516393033229980556

3) The author has only 1 paper listed in pubmed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Caro AZ[Author]&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=1055561
so it seems unlikely that they followed up this research.

4) The study is of poor quality. It's tiny. There's no control group. Their are essentially multiple treatments (anti-inflammatories and vasodialators) and multiple methods of administration.

So we really don't learn anything useful.

 

Necropost, I know, but due to the paucity of real world tinnitus solutions and my spidey-sense, thought I'd mention I'm going to try this since I have a bottle of Jacob Lab DMSO I've had lying around for 5 years or so. With major modifications of course: DMSO of 1%, max saturation of quercetin (dissolves in DMSO), otc steroid (triamcinolone acetonide - from nasal spray), in a base of full strength (fully saturated) sodium ascorbate. Not expecting much but hey DMSO is a carrier so you never know. Will do every day topically for 2 weeks. If I get worse, Hey I'm taking one for the team. I personally don't advise doing that but then I kind of have a history of doing stupid things in the interest of science in a world where published science can't be trusted.

 

Consider me a thread-watcher now.

 

The protocol has changed a bit since my last post. I was concerned that I wasn't getting the potency I needed. Anyway I'll update it when I lock it in some more. 18 hours since last administration. No substantial results yet, of course. It occurs to me that what might've been critical in the original study was the lidocaine in that it gave the patient the ability to heal. With it having at least partly a neural stimulus response I've often wondered if the ringing (if Chronic as is my case) is a sort of biological feedback loop that has to be interrupted to stop. The protocol I'm doing doesn't address that. I also have doubts that my quercetin has enough vasodialation effect. Quercetin absorption I think is very low in my formulation. I think it mostly precipitated out when I combined the DMSO-quercetin mixture to the ascorbate. If this fails I'd like to try some variations where I have a stronger effect, but using available off the shelf components makes that challenging.

 

No improvement yet. I did stop the steroid part of it fairly early on because the source I used, I couldn't find a list of inactive ingredients, which concerned me, and it has a thickener that impedes absorption. I'm also playing around a bit with the formula, and won't bore you with the details, but am thinking of some ways I think should help.
One of the challenges is that the vasodilator I chose is quercetin which is fat soluble, and while DMSO is not a fat ... in fact it is also water miscible, it dissolves quercetin very well. I hoped it might act as an emulsifier, but it isn't, so when combined with my water soluble ingredients I'm pretty sure it precipitates out ... I mentioned this in the previous post. So, that said I'm trying some things to work around it. I might use some different substitutions to try to get the same effect.
It's also worth noting that I've been sleeping poorly, but that is unrelated to this treatment, but I think good rest is key to making this work. The lidocaine, which I'm not using, I think was key in the original study to facilitate better sleep. IV lidocaine, fyi for the uninitiated, has a very high success rate in temporarily removing tinnitus, but tinnitus returns as soon as the lidocaine is depleted, and it's not the kind of treatment you can do continuously long term. I have some ideas along that line to address the sleep problem which I'll be working on this week.
I should also mention the mechanics of the treatment. I mix it weekly: then refrigerate it, and using a dropper every day at 6am fill my ear with the solution (left ear only, right ear has no ringing) then lie on my side for 30-40 minutes. Usually I fall back asleep. I've been thinking I might instead do it for a shorter duration and 2x daily. The first week I did it it messed with my vertigo and the world seemed wobbly while doing the treatment, but that effect seems to be diminishing, though I could just be getting used to the effect.

 

@Davea0511, so curious to know how it all panned out!