UNITI — Unification of Treatments and Interventions for Tinnitus Patients

I’m in Athens, Greece, right now, having just attended a 3-day kick-off meeting of a new tinnitus research consortium called UNITI. It’s another EU-funded tinnitus program, just like TINNET, ESIT, and TIN-ACT – all of which we were/are formal partners of.



Having seen various such tinnitus research consortiums in action, with varying degrees of success, I came to this meeting with a certain healthy skepticism. Is this really something new or different? It might be, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

UNITI’s Goals – Predicting Treatment Outcomes

The aim of UNITI is to develop a model that can accurately predict which treatments or combination of treatments will work for which patients.



We all know that hearing aids, for instance, have for some people completely resolved their tinnitus while others experience no benefit at all. Wouldn’t it be great if you could know ahead of time whether you fall in the former or latter group? And CBT, as we all know, is not for everyone. It could be though that for some people it only works in combination with another treatment like sound therapy.

I can already hear you thinking: “CBT, hearing aids, sound therapy? There’s nothing new about that!” And that was my initial response as well. UNITI will only evaluate the effectiveness of existing, tested and widely available treatments. The novelty of it lies in the aim to find out what works for whom. What types of patients (based on certain biomarkers for instance) are susceptible to what types of treatments or combinations of treatments? This also ties into the quest for those (so far quite elusive) tinnitus sub-types – and without the sub-types, no cures. Still, I have wondered why newer/emerging treatments were not included and will try to get more info on that.

So What’s New?

Nonetheless, I believe there’s something really innovative going on here with the focus on collecting biomarker data from tinnitus patients. There’s some promising preliminary work on genetic markers for tinnitus – see for instance the work of Christopher Cederroth – and UNITI could really take this to the next level. They will be collecting biomarker and questionnaire data from about 500 patients. They will also be pooling existing datasets from different research centers into one big database. And more data is always better, in my opinion.



Another innovative aspect is the use of computational modelling to predict treatment outcomes. This has not been done before, and if it works, it could be extended to any emerging or future tinnitus treatment to get a complete picture of what is effective for whom.

What Can We Expect From UNITI?

Can we realistically expect significantly better treatments due to this program? It’s a bit like predicting the lottery, to be honest. If it all goes very well, they might find something really beneficial for a certain group of patients. But a magic bullet likely not.

Still… the implications could be broader than that. One of the reasons pharma companies for instance haven’t much picked up on tinnitus treatments is the lack of objective biomarkers and unclarity on sub-types, which will hopefully be (partially) addressed by UNITI. Plus, if really strong patterns are found in the data, i.e. if we know that people with a certain genetic, neurological or other biological predilection are more susceptible to a certain treatment, wouldn’t this provide a clear target for better (pharmacological) treatments or even cures?

I know, it’s a long and winding road, the progress of science. I’m sure you each have your own opinions, questions or concerns on this program. Please post them here and I can guarantee that your messages will be seen and responded to by someone from UNITI!

Our Role in UNITI

Just to clarify my role in UNITI: I’m a member of their advisory board. That means I cannot directly influence how the research is carried out, but I can give input and advice. My aim is to involve as many of you in this as possible in the coming years. The project will run until the end of 2023, but this year is especially important because it lays the groundwork for everything else. So, if you have ideas on what types of data should be collected, how treatment outcomes should be measured, or anything else, let me know!



Get Involved – Clinical Trial Protocol Review

One concrete element of the project that we – as a patient community – have been invited to comment on is the clinical trial protocol, which is being designed as we speak. I therefore want to put together a small panel of people from our end to review and give feedback on the draft protocol. If you wish to volunteer for this, please PM me and Markku. In case of many applicants, we will favour those with a science background, but all should feel free to volunteer!