Melatonin for Tinnitus

Research suggests that melatonin may offer modest benefits for tinnitus patients, particularly in improving sleep quality and reducing subjective tinnitus-related distress, though the evidence is mixed and the overall picture remains incomplete. The body of literature includes randomized controlled trials, retrospective studies, and several reviews, with a number of trials finding statistically significant reductions in tinnitus severity scores — especially when melatonin was combined with other agents like sulodexide or sulpiride — while one network meta-analysis found no meaningful improvement in quality of life across drug treatments including melatonin, and at least one clinical practice guideline explicitly recommends against its routine use. Studies indicate that where benefits have been observed, they may reflect melatonin's sleep-regulating properties rather than any direct effect on the auditory mechanism itself, and one observational study found lower circulating melatonin levels in older adults with tinnitus, suggesting a possible physiological link worth further exploration. Taken together, the research base is limited by small sample sizes, inconsistent outcome measures, and a lack of large, high-quality trials, which means firm conclusions about melatonin's efficacy for tinnitus cannot yet be drawn.