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Home-based Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) in Patients With Chronic Tinnitus

A Preliminary Clinical Trial for Efficacy of Non-invasive Home-based Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) Therapy in Patients With Intractable Chronic Tinnitus

Status
UNKNOWN
Phases
NA
Study type
Interventional
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT05189587
Enrollment
60
Registered
2022-01-12
Start date
2022-03-01
Completion date
2023-06-30
Last updated
2022-02-01

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Depression, Depressive Disorder, Hearing Disorders, Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases, Tinnitus

Keywords

Transcranial electrical stimulation, Tinnitus

Brief summary

The investigators applied home-based transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) for neuromodulative treatment in patients with intractable chronic tinnitus.

Detailed description

For treatment of motor and psychiatric disorders, transcranial electrical stimulation including transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), or transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) are in use worldwidely. The investigators applied these neuromodulation techniques into patients with intractable chronic tinnitus for symptom relief. Experimental groups with 60 subjective tinnitus subjects will be consisted of three different treatment groups which are: TES group, TES with sham stimulation group, and control group. Subjects will be given 1.0 milliampere (mA) TES on bifrontal areas for neuromodulation.

Interventions

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that passes an electrical current through the cortex of the brain to alter brain function. The electrical current is applied to an individual's scalp usually via two or more electrodes, and whilst a large amount of the current is conducted between electrodes through soft tissue and skull (Vöröslakos et al. 2018), a portion of the current penetrates the scalp and is conducted through the brain, where it can alter neuronal excitability. By altering the activity of brain regions involved with a behaviour of interest, investigators can observe the resulting behavioral changes and so establish a causal link between the two (Reed et al. 2018).

Sponsors

Seoul National University Hospital
Lead SponsorOTHER

Study design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE (Subject, Investigator)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
19 Years to 80 Years
Healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

* Research volunteers with intractable chronic tinnitus who agreed to participate in the clinical trial were gathered from the tinnitus clinic of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head-and-Neck Surgery, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital

Exclusion criteria

* psychoactive drug user * implanted material * pacemaker user

Design outcomes

Primary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Tinnitus handicap inventory (THI)the same 1 week after treatmentThe THI consists of 25 items, each with the 3 response options-yes (4 points), sometimes (2 points), and no (0 points)-resulting in a total score range from 0 to 100. A higher score denotes a higher tinnitus-related handicap.

Secondary

MeasureTime frameDescription
resting-state quantitative electroencephalography (rs-qEEG)the same 1 week after treatmentEEG activities in certain cortical regions within all 8 frequency bands will be compared. Specifically, as for the source localization analysis, standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) will be employed to estimate the scalp-recorded electrical activity in each of the eight frequency bands (i.e., intracerebral sources). We will identify the cortical sources that generate the activities recorded by the scalp electrodes in each of the following eight frequency bands: delta (2-3.5Hz), theta (4-7.5Hz), alpha 1 (8-10Hz), alpha 2 (10-12Hz), beta 1 (13-18Hz), beta 2 (18.5-21Hz), beta 3 (21.5-30Hz), and gamma (30.5-44Hz). sLORETA computes neuronal electrical activity as current density (A/m2) without assuming a predefined number of active sources.

Contacts

Primary ContactJae-Jin Song, Professor
jjsong96@gmail.com+82-31-787-7408

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026