Tinnitus Not Exactly Hereditary

New research from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health shows that the relative importance of genetic factors in tinnitus is low. This is the first large population-based study to measure the heritability of tinnitus.

The study looked at prevalence of tinnitus and to what degree it is hereditary. Prevalence of tinnitus was 15.1 percent, which correlates well with findings from other countries.

Tinnitus - Causes - Symptoms - Diagnose - Treatment - FAQs
Tinnitus is the perception of ringing, hissing, or other sound within the ears when no corresponding external sound is present.

Tinnitus is a symptom with a variety of underlying causes, such as impaired hearing or exposure to noise and medicines.

The study shows that only 11 percent of the variance of tinnitus in the population are caused by genetic effects, whereas environmental factors account for the remaining 89 percent.

"Such a low heritability is a surprising find because most other diseases studied earlier have been more or less hereditary. We had expected that genetics and the environment would be roughly as important as each other," said Dr Ellen Kvestad at the Division for Mental Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Anatomy of Ear and Hearing
Ear converts sound waves into electrical impulses that are transmitted to the temporal lobe of the brain through the auditory nerve. It consists of outer, inner and middle sections.

The article "Low heritability of tinnitus" was recently published in Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery.

However, researchers said that In the study it was not possible to differentiate between different clinical forms of tinnitus.

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"Our findings do not mean that genes are not important for some forms of tinnitus. Some sub-groups of tinnitus with certain underlying causes can have higher heritability. From our findings alone, resources cannot be allocated to find specific genes that code for tinnitus in general, added Kvestad.

The study used data from the Nord Trøndelag Hearing Loss Study, which is an integral part of the Nord Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT). Self-reported questionnaires were used to collate information on prevalence of tinnitus from 51,574 people over 18 years of age.

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