Revisiting Baclofen for the Treatment of Severe Chronic Tinnitus

Paul F Smith,Yiwen Zheng,Cynthia L Darlington

doi:10.3389/fneur.2012.00034

Abstract

Revisiting Baclofen for the Treatment of Severe Chronic Tinnitus

Highlights

On the assumption that chronic tinnitus is associated with neuronal hyperactivity at different levels of the central auditory pathways, such as the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the inferior colliculus, and the auditory cortex (see Moller, 2000; Eggermont and Roberts, 2004; Eggermont, 2005; Kaltenbach, 2006; Roberts et al, 2010 for reviews; see Dong et al, 2010; Middleton et al, 2011; Vogler et al, 2011; Wang et al, 2011 and Mulders and Robertson, 2011 for recent examples), drugs that increase inhibitory neurotransmission or block excitatory neurotransmission, are often used
On the assumption that chronic tinnitus is associated with neuronal hyperactivity at different levels of the central auditory pathways, such as the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the inferior colliculus, and the auditory cortex, drugs that increase inhibitory neurotransmission or block excitatory neurotransmission, are often used
The idea that d-baclofen is an antagonist, at least at some GABAB receptors, is still unresolved (Froestl, 2010), at the very least it can be concluded that its agonist effects are much less potent than l-baclofen, which appears to be the case in the inferior colliculus (Szczepaniak and Møller, 1995, 1995)

Summary

Introduction

On the assumption that chronic tinnitus is associated with neuronal hyperactivity at different levels of the central auditory pathways, such as the dorsal cochlear nucleus, the inferior colliculus, and the auditory cortex (see Moller, 2000; Eggermont and Roberts, 2004; Eggermont, 2005; Kaltenbach, 2006; Roberts et al, 2010 for reviews; see Dong et al, 2010; Middleton et al, 2011; Vogler et al, 2011; Wang et al, 2011 and Mulders and Robertson, 2011 for recent examples), drugs that increase inhibitory neurotransmission or block excitatory neurotransmission, are often used. As Hoekstra et al (2011) concluded in a recent review, the evidence supporting the efficacy of anti-epileptic drugs in treating tinnitus is not very convincing.

Results

Conclusion