Tinnitus Pharmacotherapy

Tinnitus is a common symptom for which, in most cases, there is no proved and reliable causal treatment. Thus, it is still a clinically unmet need. The proposed interventions for the management of tinnitus are diverse and most patients would welcome a compound that finally abolishes their phantom sound. The observation that tinnitus can be transiently suppressed by lidocaine indicates that the symptom is susceptible to pharmacotherapy. In this chapter, we review clinical studies investigating pharmacological compounds for the treatment of tinnitus. A wide variety of different drugs have been investigated. However, at present, there is no approved drug to treat tinnitus. Evidence-based pharmacological approaches are limited to the treatment of comorbidities such as depression, anxiety, or insomnia. Finally, we discuss challenges in tinnitus drug discovery and potential strategies to overcome them.