A new sound therapy could help the millions of people in the UK who suffer from tinnitus, also known as ringing in the ears. Up to eight million Britons are thought to suffer from tinnitus, a condition that causes sufferers to perceive noises such as ringing, buzzing, humming or hissing in their ears when there is no external sound source.

A groundbreaking sound therapy may offer relief to the millions in the UK plagued by tinnitus, commonly described as persistent ear ringing. This condition, affecting up to eight million Britons, manifests as phantom noises like ringing, buzzing, humming, or hissing, despite the absence of any external sound source.

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.”

Researchers made small changes to synthetic musical notes for one group, while other patients were given placebo sounds to listen to, which had been modified to different frequencies.

Dr. Will Sedley, a consultant neurologist and researcher at Newcastle University, commented, “Currently, effective treatments to completely eliminate tinnitus sounds are lacking. The focus remains on helping sufferers disengage and better manage the condition.”

In the study, one group received slight alterations to synthetic musical notes, while a control group listened to placebo sounds with varying frequencies. Participants engaged with these sounds online for an hour daily over six weeks, followed by a three-week pause.

Dr Sedley said: “We came to analyse the data, and what we found is 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.”

The study found the therapy quietened tinnitus by around 10% on average, which lasted for around three weeks after treatment ended. Dr Sedley said: “This could be done to everyday sounds like music, which is our later ambition.

“We did it with synthetic musical notes, but we just modify them subtly, so that the neurons that respond to sound pitches or frequencies near to the tinnitus, we’re just activating them at slightly different times to each other, rather than all together.”

While more studies are needed, researchers are hopeful of developing the therapy 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.

“One of the nice things is, if it does work, it doesn’t need special hardware. It could be built into people’s ordinary, everyday lives and listening experience.

“So the hope is, even if we can’t cure tinnitus, that we might find something that makes it quieter for a fair number of people living with it, just by doing the things they would already be doing in their lives.

“And this wouldn’t even necessarily have to be done from within a medical pathway or a clinic or prescribed. They could just get an app, for instance, or log onto a website and just start as soon as they want to, really.”

Dr Sedley estimates that around one in eight adults will develop persistent tinnitus, rising to one in four among the elderly, and there are numerous theories about what causes it.

He said: “One of the theories about what causes it is that when various cells, brain cells in the hearing pathway, lose some of their input from a little bit of hearing loss, too much noise, or just 

natural ageing, they get spontaneously active, rather than being triggered on and off by actual sounds as much as they should.

“And that spontaneous activity, they end up firing in rhythm with each other, so they all fire at the same time and stop at the same time.”

He likens this “synchrony” to a crowd at a football match. “What we’re doing is using sound as a way to try and break up that synchrony, or make the neurons in that crowd say things at different times, and if we can get them doing that, then the brain will get less of a message from them, and we’ll hear less tinnitus.”

Dr Sedley said anyone living with tinnitus could potentially stand to benefit from the sound therapy, although he stressed it is “early days”.

Ralph Holme, director of research at RNID, said: “This is a highly promising development when it comes to possible treatments for tinnitus — a condition which affects millions in the UK and for which there is currently no cure.

“Most current tinnitus therapies focus on learning to live with the condition and developing ways to manage it, which millions of people do find hugely positive and helpful.

“However, this new method focuses on reducing the sound itself and targets the source of the tinnitus perception.

“And because the therapy has the potential to be rolled out with relative ease, in the future, people could access treatment with just a few swipes of their smartphone.”