The Use of Benzodiazepines for Tinnitus: Systematic Review

A relatively recent review of the studies of benzodiazepines for tinnitus. Perhaps the most important point is the evidence base for clonazepam as potentially effective for some acute/chronic tinnitus cases. Important that the audiology industry don't succeed in suppressing this information which could threaten their commercial interests but could also potentially help save lives.

Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
To investigate the effectiveness of benzodiazepine use for subjective tinnitus and to consider this in the context of the concomitant side effects.

METHODS:
A systematic search of several databases using the terms 'tinnitus' and 'benzodiazepines' was conducted to find clinical trials of benzodiazepines and comparators in tinnitus patients. These studies were then assessed for risk of bias.

RESULTS:
Six clinical trials were included. Clonazepam was found to be effective in three studies, but these studies had limitations regarding adequate blinding. The effectiveness of alprazolam was equivocal. Diazepam was not effective in two studies and oxazepam was effective in one study.

CONCLUSION:
Benzodiazepine use for subjective tinnitus does not have a robust evidence base. Clonazepam has the most evidence to support its use and is relatively less likely to lead to abuse because of its longer half-life, but caution is still needed given the other serious side effects.

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25858126

 

Clonazepam is about the only drug that can provide relief for me; Although I've not tried Trobalt yet.

 

You are suspecting the audiology industry compromising the fact that there is not a single serious, universally acclaimed study that proves the effect of benzodiazepines for tinnitus and would be willing to suppress useful data for T people.

I'd just answer that the benzo (a multi-billion industry even for tinnitus i'd guess) industrial spy is like the love child of James Bond and Jason Bourne, with a little bit of Mata Hari thrown in, while the audiology industrial spy is probably Doc Nagler.

 

W

On the contrary for the audiology industry tinnitus is a multi-billion pound/dollar nice little earner - just do a Google search and you'll see a million and one audiology products on offer to "manage" your tinnitus - most of them of dubious merit. Frankly your view does show a degree of naivety about the audiology industry.

In contrast big pharma - and their failings have been well documented- has never been especially interested in tinnitus - the record of new drugs being developed for tinnitus has been very limited. However, many tinnitus sufferers have found that clonazepam can reduce their tinnitus volume and the research in this highly reputable journal supports this view.

 

So you believe there is foul-play from the audiology industry towards the t sufferer?
Could be, fair enough.

You should know however, that volume reduction through clonazepam or whatever is only temporary. Any relevant follow up study (after a couple of years) will probably yield a bunch of benzo addicted people, probably with their tinnitus pretty much still in place.
Benzodiazepines do not cure any GABA related problems in the brain (either the transport or production of it). They merely correct them for a small amount of time.

I'm sure in due time the tinnitus problem will be sorted out and i'm more than sure that GABA will a big part of that solution. In the meantime we will just chew down our pills and be happy with what we have and some people will have their hearing-aids set to birds chirping in order to mask. Whatever works for anyone.

 

Did I in fact ever claim anything else? Of course clonazepam doesn't offer a "cure" for tinnitus (to state the bleeding obvious). What it does offer is temporary management of the effects of severe chronic tinnitus - more effectively and at a fraction of a cost of the audiology products on the market

Don't hold your breath on that one.

 

Yes if owned a hearing aid company all this talk of curing H and T would surely have me anxious, if I had kids to provide for I might be tempted to pay these people NOT to cure H or T. And if they didn't accept money then I might result to sabotage through all my connections and using all of my power. I could see me doing this, if I depended on income from selling hearing aids. And it's not just the hearing aid industry it's also the cochlear implant industry! Two separate billion dollar industries who benefit from not having a cure. However I need my hearing aid but of coarse e would rather have a cure.

The masker is used to cover the bird noises, lol, my right ear makes bird noises 24/7 on its own (explain that!) and the aid masker plays a constant noise to cover up the bird noises. Yes this is "catastrophic" tinnitus, even if they find a cure for noise induced T it likely won't work for me because my T is from the infection of the vestibu-cochlear nerve aka known as labrynthitis.

 

A xanax might be in order.

Oh hell, you went out and sabotaged it.

 

Ya I did it pretty good Davey.

Benzos and tinnitus have no real connection anything else is Spec-u-lation, nation. Your tinnitus will be there whether you pop a Xanax or if you don't!

I looked into a crystal ball for these answers.

 

On the contrary the evidence of this medical review suggests that there is a connection, unsurprisingly. Certainly not one of "cure" but a reductive effect on tinnitus noise level. You don't need "your crystal ball" for this one, just a reasonable amount of research data. More research is clearly desirable also.

Regards, David

 

Perception of everything is depressed on Xanax it doesn't mean Tinnitus is reduced it means your on xanex and *drooling on yourself again*

Whisky on the other hand has been shown extensively in my personal trials to reduce Tinnitus, like last night I got wasted and couldn't even hear my T when I passed out, eureka?

 

LOL. We should form a "Team Whisky" as it sounds like more testing is required!

 

Late Jack Vernon prescribed Xanax to a lot of patients and according to him it worked wonders

 

Hi Ian, you appear to be somewhat confused (maybe the whisky doesn't help!) So let's explain things for you clearly.

The study evidence I am quoting is for the use of clonazepam for tinnitus. You are talking (repeatedly) about Xanax. Completely different drug. Nothing to do with Clonazepam. Xanax is used primarily for "anxiety" disorders". Clonazepam is prescribed primarily for epilepsy. As most recent medical research have shown links between epilepsy and tinnitus it is not surprising that Clonazepam can be used for tinnitus also.

I do hope this clears up your confusion.

Regards, David

 

Xanax and clonazepram are not completely different drugs. Both act the same on the CNS and GABA as a Benzos, they differ in strength and their half life - Xanax is more potent, faster acting with a less Half life. But both seem to have a similar effect on tinnitus due to this reason. Clonazepram is the preference due to less addiction and it's longer half life.

 

How about some actual evidence for the paranoid claim that the hearing aid industry is actively suppressing tinnitus research, could I see that please? Could someone explain how that would work? Tinnitus research is the ongoing effort of thousands of researchers spread out across hundreds of hospitals and universities around the world. Is the hearing aid industry secretly infiltrating all of them, so that they know who they need to kill for getting too close to the truth? If they are not infiltrating all of them, how do they pick? How are they able to influence the peer review process of dozens of different academic journals?

Have you guys been directly involved in clinical tinnitus research, or any other similar clinical work?

I realize this is a pretty snarky reply, but ffs, suggesting that Big Hearing Aid is the reason we don't have a tinnitus cure is like one step above people claiming that the government is conspiring with the airline industry to control the weather system with chemtrails.

The market cap of the entire hearing aid industry combined, is smaller than a number of individual pharmaceutical companies.

 

You seem to believe that the audiology industry and the hearing aid industry are synonymous. Nothing could be further from the truth. Do a Google search for the commercial audiological products available for tinnitus in any region and you'll find that the vast majority of them are not hearing aids - they are different commercial sound systems promising different results.

To take one example from the UK where I live, the Tinnitus clinic has expensive headquarters in Harley Street and charge their customers thousands of pounds for a product called Acoustic Neuromoulation Reset, a commercial audiology product which promises to individually match sound tones to the tones of the client's subjective tinnitus. They paid large sums of money to run a medical trial to validate their product - and then shelved the results when they showed that it actually had minimal effect. Despite this they have expanded their operations to other cities in the UK and have a very large client list.

Would the tinnitus clinic want clonazepam available as a prescription drug for tinnitus (for which British citizens would pay at most eight pounds for a significant number of tablets) when they are asking their customers to cough up thousands of pounds? Of course not - so clinical trials which show evidence for clonazepam are blocked. The few which take place usually happen outside the UK.

 

US has many of these clinics as well, and I'm still not understanding how "clinical trials which show evidence for clonazepam are blocked". What does "blocked" mean? How is this "blocking" accomplished? How can a single clinic with a profit motive prevent research from occurring at any of the hundreds or thousands of other clinical sites with an interest in tinnitus?

In fact benzos have been assessed for tinnitus efficiency in hundreds (probably thousands) of patients in dozens of different studies. There's good evidence that they are useful for short-term or occasional relief. There's also evidence that long-term there's a serious risk of dependence, and, further, that long-term use of benzos may cause or exacerbate tinnitus. I've never known anyone who got permanent relief of their tinnitus from benzos, but I have communicated with a number of people with no history of tinnitus who developed it as a result of benzo use...

it's one thing to suggest that Neuromonics, or the ACRN people, or any other single product shop has to some extent cooked the books in their own studies of their own IP; that's pretty much par for the course with medical devices, and pharma co's also have a bad track record of doing the same thing. However, it's quite different to suggest that any of these organizations are willing, and especially capable, of adversely affecting the direction or pace of unrelated research happening other places.

 

It is accomplished by paying people off. Huge companies located in the Harley Street have the means to bribe.

 

So this happens on a widespread enough scale to impact the dozens of separate ongoing tinnitus treatment research efforts, but no one in the industry knows about it, and there's no paper trail, evidence, etc?

Sounds pretty nutty to me. How do you feel about chemtrails? Were the moon landings faked? Is the earth flat?

 

That's exactly right. Tinnitus research in the UK is a pretty small world - not that many professors with the power to get a clinical trial underway. Deb Hall, David Baguley, Laurence Mckenna to name three prominent names. All of them in the pay of the major audiology companies - Deb Hall in charge of the Tinnitus Clinic Neuromodulation trial which got shelved, David Baguley's accepted numerous gifts from audiology companies, Laurence Mckenna with prominent commercial links to another Harley street audiology practice.

He who pays the piper calls the tune and thes last thing these audiology companies want is a large scale trial validating clonazepam - it would be commercial death for many of them,

 

Not "nutty" at all - powerful companies looking after their commercial interests - that's the way the world works.

 

I'm not disputing that; I'm asking for any actual evidence of intervention by audiology or hearing aid companies to prevent tinnitus research.

I also ask, again, if you have any experience performing or being involved in this kind of research, and, again, for exact steps by which such research could be blocked by a "powerful company". Science is not a monolithic enterprise.

 

Nonsense; I am aware of numerous ongoing trials of one kind or another in the UK with none of these names attached to them. I'll spare you a long list of links because it sounds like you're familiar with google.

I don't even think this is true; there is a large demographic of people who would prefer not to use drugs, even if they worked. Which they don't, not well, and not long-term... which we know, because there have been dozens of different studies into the impact of benzodiazepines on tinnitus.

If Clonazepam cures your tinnitus, why are you still here posting about it? Why aren't you just off somewhere enjoying your cure?

 

Clonazepam caused my T.
Steer clear of that crap.
I have heard of LOTS of people with the same experiences

 

Glad to hear that - your previous posts suggested you were.

I've already given you clear examples of audiology companies preventing and interfering with research work - The Tinnitus Clinic censored the results of a research trial testing its product because it didn't like the results it came up. Quite frankly do you want me to start potentially involving Tinnitus Talk in litigation by going into more details.?

Your rather sunny American ultra-positive take on the tinnitus industry is charming enough but definitely needs adjustment.

 

Sure. As I said six posts ago, bilking the results of your own small trial is lightyears different than preventing or changing the outcome of other research, or changing the tide of global research. You have still not given any examples of that happening, or even proposed a mechanism by which it could other than vague references to money.

Oh, I more than want you to, I triple-dog-dare you.

You'll actually find me quite cynical, and with an overall pessimistic view on scientific progress as relates to profit motives in the healthcare industry. I just stop well short of conspiracy theories, because I've had enough direct experience with different tinnitus researchers over the years to understand that it would not, in practice, really be possible for someone like Neuromonics to prevent someone like Pfizer or Roche from pioneering a tinnitus drug.

 

Please cite any point in any of my previous posts where I said that "Clonazepam cures tinnitus."

No? Because I didn't. I said that it had a reductive effect on tinnitus noise. I haven't taken clonazepam for years now. I was really grateful to be able to get it prescribed in the early days of my tinnitus and it makes me mad that it is still not on the list of medications approved for tinnitus in the UK. Frankly lives have been lost because of that and that's something I'd like to see changed.

 

That's a whole separate can of worms, then; I personally am of the basic opinion that people should be able to largely choose what drugs they want to consume, and there is a huge and stark difference between the US & UK about benzos specifically. That said, they are often indeed "given out like candy" over here, and lives have also been lost to excessive or inappropriate benzo prescriptions... so this is a complex avenue to explore.

 

But in the UK they can't - if it's not on the recommended prescription list it can't be legally obtained - I was lucky enough to have a GP (doctor) who read the evidence I presented and prescribed it for me.

That much is true - I try to refrain from commenting on US matters and maybe you would be well advised to do the same with the UK.