Therapeutic role of Vitamin B12 in patients of chronic tinnitus: A pilot study

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in the context of tinnitus.

The aim of this study is to determine the role of Vitamin B12 in treatment of chronic tinnitus.

Why It Was Studied

True tinnitus is a phantom auditory perception arising from a source or trigger in the cochlea, brainstem, or at higher centers and has no detectable acoustic generator.

The most accepted is the famous neurophysiologic model of Jastreboff, which stresses that tinnitus, is a subcortical perception and results from the processing of weak neural activity in the periphery.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 40 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

Some patients received a placebo instead of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12), giving a reference point.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) study would be practical.

The timeline in the abstract includes 6 weeks.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Audiometry, Auditory Perception, Chronic Disease, Drug Monitoring, Tinnitus, Vitamin B 12 and Vitamin B 12 Deficiency.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 40 patients in people with tinnitus over 6 weeks.

The publication is from 2016 (Noise & health), a journal based in India.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page, Tinnitus research.