A new sound therapy has been found to quieten tinnitus by around 10 per cent on average, with effects lasting about three weeks after treatment finishes.
Experts are hopeful that the therapy, which involves patients listening to modified sounds to disrupt brain activity patterns and quieten the ringing, could one day be available as a smartphone app.
The trial, led by Newcastle University and part-funded by RNID, the national charity for deaf people, included 77 patients with tinnitus.
The condition can follow hearing loss, certain medicines or depression and anxiety, and causes the perception of buzzing, humming, throbbing or hissing without any external sound.
Researchers made small changes to synthetic musical notes for one group, while others were given placebo sounds modified to different frequencies.
The groups listened online for an hour a day over six weeks, before a three-week break.
They then listened for another six weeks, with the sounds swapped, although patients were not told which sound was the modified note and which was the placebo.
Dr Will Sedley, consultant neurologist and researcher at Newcastle University, said: “At the moment, there aren’t really very good treatments to get rid of the tinnitus sound, and it’s all about helping people disengage and learn to live better with the symptom.”
He said that, on average, “people listening to the active ones, but not the placebo ones, during that phase did get a significant quieting of their tinnitus.”
Researchers are hopeful the therapy can be developed further.
Dr Sedley added: “There’s all manner of different modifications we can make to the sounds themselves, or how long a day you listen for.
“If we could build this into the normal, listening to music, and talk radio, podcasts, people are doing anyway, they could rack up hours and hours of listening every day.”
