The effect of naltrexone on the perception and distress in tinnitus: an open-label pilot study.
Objective:
Tinnitus is a perceived sensation of sound without actual acoustic
stimulation.
Currently there are no standardized drug therapies for the
treatment of tinnitus patients.
A potential novel treatment for chronic
tinnitus is naltrexone.
Tinnitus can be considered an auditory phantom
phenomenon similar to phantom pain.
Naltrexone acts predominantly on
µ-opioid receptors which are present in multiple areas of the brain,
including the thalamus, dorsal part of the anterior cingulate, insula,
amygdala, nucleus accumbens, and ventromedial to orbitofrontal cortex.
These areas overlap with the areas involved in tinnitus-related
distress.
The aim of the present study is to investigate three doses of
naltrexone, namely 5, 12.5, and 50 mg and determine their influence on
tinnitus complaints.
We conducted a 4-week single-center, open-label
treatment study.
Subjects and methods: 86 patients received the drug
treatment, while 30 patients received no treatment
Results: Overall
tinnitus distress was significantly reduced for the drug treatment
group, while for the waiting control group this was not the case.
No
significant effect could be obtained for tinnitus intensity.
A closer
look at the data indicates that this effect is mainly generated due to a
significant difference in the 50 mg drug treatment group for tinnitus
distress.
Conclusion: our results indicate that naltrexone might have an
effect on tinnitus distress and more particularly higher doses of
naltrexone.
Fuente. International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
2013;Vol 51(1):5 11
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