Medicines, supplements & substances

A common pain and fever reliever, not an NSAID, whose frequent long-term use was linked in one large cohort to a modestly higher risk of persistent tinnitus.

A clinical study found alcohol worsened tinnitus in 22% of patients, helped 16%, and had no effect on the rest — genuine individual variation, not one answer.

High-dose aspirin causes reversible tinnitus. A 69,000-person study found regular ibuprofen or Tylenol use also raises long-term risk — the real dose picture.

Tinnitus is a recognized, if uncommon, symptom of benzodiazepine withdrawal — usually temporary, but documented to persist for months in some cases.

Adverse-event reports flag tinnitus with bisoprolol, nebivolol and timolol combinations more often than expected. What those signals mean, and their limits.

Betahistine is commonly prescribed for tinnitus in parts of Europe, but the clinical evidence review body NICE found no clinical difference versus placebo.

In a blinded trial, cutting caffeine left tinnitus severity unchanged but brought real withdrawal symptoms. Why a skipped coffee can still matter.

A large NHANES study found heavy cannabis users had nearly double the odds of tinnitus. Here's why the evidence points toward risk, not relief, for most people.

Cisplatin, a widely used chemotherapy drug, causes tinnitus in a majority of patients who receive it — a well-documented, dose-dependent side effect.

Cutting caffeine and alcohol is some of the most common tinnitus advice out there — but the research behind it is weaker than most people assume.

No medication is approved anywhere for tinnitus itself. Here is what was tried, what the trials found, and the narrow places where a drug does have a role.

AM-101 (an esketamine gel), OTO-313 and SPI-1005: what happened when each tinnitus drug was tested, and how to read the next hopeful headline.

An anticonvulsant tried for chronic tinnitus; placebo-controlled trials found it no better than placebo, and reviews call the evidence insufficient.

Gentamicin can cause tinnitus, hearing loss and lasting balance damage. Who is most at risk, what monitoring catches, and what trials show in Ménière's disease.

Ginkgo biloba is one of the most widely recommended supplements for tinnitus. Two Cochrane reviews and the best-designed trials found no reliable benefit.

Tinnitus appears in FDA side-effect reports for Ozempic-type drugs, but no study shows they cause it. What reports show, and how weight loss affects the ear.

Supplements are sold for taking before a concert or during chemotherapy. Eleven trials and 701 patients later, the honest summary is that nothing has been shown to work well enough to rely on — and the clearest test of the leading candidate was negative.

Antibiotics such as azithromycin, erythromycin and clarithromycin, occasionally linked to tinnitus and hearing loss that usually, though not always, clears.

Both minerals are widely sold as tinnitus supplements. The evidence is real but limited — weaker than the marketing suggests.

Melatonin has more encouraging trial data than most tinnitus supplements — particularly for people whose tinnitus is tangled up with poor sleep.

Inherited mitochondrial DNA changes that make the inner ear highly sensitive to aminoglycoside antibiotics, so a standard dose can cause permanent deafness.

Antibiotic ear drops, mainly aminoglycosides such as neomycin and gentamicin, that can harm hearing and balance if they pass a perforated eardrum or grommet.

Common and prescription medications are linked to tinnitus. Which drugs are implicated, and why you should never stop a drug on your own.

Damage to hearing or balance caused by a substance, usually a medication. Some ototoxic effects reverse when the drug stops; others do not.

Sudden hearing loss after Viagra, Cialis and related drugs is rare and unproven as a drug effect, but the Viagra and Cialis labels say stop and get seen fast.

Early psilocybin work suggests it disrupts how the brain filters familiar sounds — a mechanism relevant to tinnitus. No human trial of psilocybin has reported.

A meta-analysis of 20 studies found current and former smokers face a real, measurable increase in tinnitus risk — modest in size, consistent across studies.

SSRIs are sometimes used for tinnitus-related distress, yet tinnitus is a listed side effect of nearly every SSRI. How both of those can be true at once.

A large analysis of 90,271 patients linked statin use to higher odds of hearing loss and tinnitus — with real differences between individual statins.

General anaesthesia is not expected to cause tinnitus, but a spinal or epidural rarely can, and hearing loss after any operation needs same-day assessment.

What Lipo-Flavonoid, Arches and the tinnitus pills sold online contain, what the research found, and why both US guidelines advise against them.

Vaping delivers nicotine differently from smoking, with plausible but still under-researched links to tinnitus. What the evidence does and does not yet show.