CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Tinnitus is a highly prevalent condition that is associated with hearing lossin most cases. In the absence of external stimuli, phantom perceptions ofsounds emerge from alterations in neuronal activity within central auditoryand nonauditory structures. Pioneering studies using lidocaine revealed thattinnitus is susceptible to pharmacological interventions. However, lidocaineis not effective in all patients, and no other drug has been identiﬁed with clearefﬁcacy for the long-term treatment of tinnitus. In this review, we presentrecent advances in tinnitus research, including more detailed knowledge ofits pathophysiology and involved neurotransmitter systems. Moreover, wesummarize results from animal and clinical treatment studies as well as fromstudies that identiﬁed tinnitus as a side effect of pharmacological treatments.Finally, we focus on challenges in the development of pharmacological com-pounds for the treatment of tinnitus, namely the limitations of availableanimal models and of standardized clinical research methodologies.