|
 Transcranial magnetic simulation (TMS) is not currently available
for the average person with tinnitus, but the study's lead author
hopes it will someday be used along with existing therapies like
hearing aids and symptom management strategies.
"I don’t see TMS replacing all that, but I see it as another option
for helping some patients," said Robert Folmer of Portland Veterans
Affairs Medical Center and Oregon Health and Science University.
"Tinnitus is more likely to occur in people with hearing loss or
people who had a lot of noise exposure," he said. "So it’s usually
associated with damage to the auditory system."
For the treatment, electric current running through a coil placed on
the scalp generates a magnetic field that affects nearby brain
cells.
"It’s the magnetic field that penetrates the scalp and skull and
interacts with brain tissue," Folmer told Reuters Health. The
therapy is already approved in the U.S. for treatment of depression,
he added.
Past studies have found that people with tinnitus have increased
neural activity in regions of the brain associated with hearing even
when there is no sound, Folmer said.
"When we deliver one pulse per second of TMS, that low rate of TMS
stimulation can suppress neural activity in that region," he said.
For the new study of 64 people with significant ringing in their
ears, the researchers randomly assigned half the participants to
receive 2,000 TMS pulses during sessions over 10 consecutive
business days. The other half of the participants received sham TMS.
The sessions lasted approximately 35 minutes each.
The participants then periodically filled out questionnaires about
the severity of their tinnitus over the next six months.
Overall, 56 percent of participants receiving TMS improved by the
end of the 10 sessions, compared to 22 percent of the participants
who received sham TMS.
"Some people responded quite well," Folmer said. "We were surprised
they maintained their improvement throughout the six months of
follow-up. I thought if people showed an improvement it would be
short-lived."
By the end of the six months, 66 percent of the TMS group had
improved, compared to 38 percent of the sham group.
[to top of second column] |
None of the participants dropped out of the trial because of side
effects, but Folmer said sometimes TMS can cause jaw movement or eye
twitching. In those cases, he said the intensity of the pulses is
turned down.
While people who responded to the treatment typically sustained
their improvements over the six months, larger studies are needed
before TMS is offered to people with tinnitus, the researchers write
in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
In a previous study, Dr. Jay Piccirillo from the Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that TMS did not
help tinnitus, but he told Reuters Health that the difference in
results between the two studies may be due to differences in the
groups studied.
For example, the participants in his study were younger, had more
severe tinnitus and had very low depression scores (see Reuters
Health story of April 22, 2013 here: http://reut.rs/1K9Gp6V).
"There is probably some effect," said Piccirillo, who wasn't
involved in the new study. "We just don’t know in whom and what
place to stimulate and how much."
Folmer said it's difficult to say how much a TMS session for
tinnitus would cost, because it's not approved to treat that
condition.
"For people with tinnitus, they should try the management strategies
that are available now," he advised.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1K9yJ4y JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck
Surgery, online July 16, 2015.
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
