Tinnitus Does Not Appear to be Genetic

(February 16, 2010) - All those baby boomers who have ringing in their ears shouldn't worry they'll pass it on to their children - unless the kids are listening to loud rock music like they did. A new study says tinnitus (Read about "Tinnitus"), or ringing in the ears, does not appear to be a highly inherited condition (i.e., does not pass frequently from parents to offspring). The study appears in the Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Tinnitus, or the perception of sound without an external acoustic stimulus, is a common but poorly understood symptom," the authors write as background information in the article. "Although the list of factors associated with tinnitus is long, the causes of tinnitus onset and tinnitus maintenance are far from fully understood, and attempts to develop evidence-based therapies have been thwarted by a poor understanding of the pathophysiology of the condition." Tinnitus has recently been reported to cluster in families, but little is known about the importance of genetic effects in susceptibility to the condition.

Researchers analyzed data collected from 12,940 spouses, 27,607 parents and offspring and 11,498 siblings. All participants completed a questionnaire about tinnitus and underwent a hearing examination. A subgroup of 16,186 individuals with some hearing loss and 17,785 controls were sent a second questionnaire requesting more details about tinnitus, to which a total of 28,066 responded.

The study found a very low correlation of parents who also had children with tinnitus. The highest correlation was between siblings, and even that was very small.

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