Unification of Treatments and Interventions for Tinnitus Patients - UNITI

We are happy to announce that we have a new paper published in EBioMedicine entitled "Burden of rare variants in synaptic genes in patients with severe tinnitus: An exome based extreme phenotype study" and is available online here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235239642100102X.

We found an enrichment of rare missense variants in 24 synaptic genes in a Spanish cohort, the most significant being PRUNE2, AKAP9, SORBS1, ITGAX, ANK2, KIF20B and TSC2 (p < 2E−04), when they were compared with reference datasets. This burden was replicated for ANK2 gene in a Swedish cohort with 97 tinnitus individuals, and in a subset of 34 Swedish patients with severe tinnitus for ANK2, AKAP9 and TSC2 genes (p < 2E−02). However, these associations were not significant in a third cohort of 701 generalized epilepsy individuals without tinnitus. Gene ontology (GO) and gene-set enrichment analyses revealed several pathways and biological processes involved in severe tinnitus, including membrane trafficking and cytoskeletal protein binding in neurons. 

UNITI project supports TRI ACADEMY Online Seminar Series that started on September 15th! Episode #1 dealt with "Tinnitus Definition and Risk Factors", presented by Berthold Langguth and Roshni Biswas. Each talk lasts around 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for questions and answers. Participation is for free - but registration is mandatory!

For detailed information about Episode #1 please have a look at TRI's YouTube channel here.

We are happy to announce that UNITI was present with three papers at the 34th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (IEEE CBMS 2021). CBMS is the premier conference for computer-based medical systems, providing a mechanism for the exchange of ideas and technologies between academic and industrial scientists.

The following UNITI papers were presented:

• Shahania, S., Unnikrishnan, V., Pryss, R., Kraft, R., Schobel, J., Hannemann, R., Schlee, W., & Spiliopoulou, M. (2021, June). User-centric vs whole-stream learning for EMA prediction. In 2021 IEEE 34th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 307-312). IEEE.https://doi.org/10.1109/CBMS52027.2021.00033
• Unnikrishnan, V., Shah, Y., Schleicher, M., Fernández-Viadero, C., Strandzheva, M., Velikova, D., Schlee, W., & Spiliopoulou, M. (2021, June). Love thy Neighbours: A Framework for Error-Driven Discovery of Useful Neighbourhoods for One-Step Forecasts on EMA data. In 2021 IEEE 34th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 295-300). IEEE.https://doi.org/10.1109/CBMS52027.2021.00080
• Jamaludeen, N., Unnikrishnan, V., Pryss, R., Schobel, J., Schlee, W., & Spiliopoulou, M. (2021, June). Circadian Conditional Granger Causalities on Ecological Momentary Assessment Data from an mHealth App. In 2021 IEEE 34th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) (pp. 354-359). IEEE.https://doi.org/10.1109/CBMS52027.2021.00110

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Deutsche Tinnitus-Liga e.V., which supports the study center at the Charité University Medical Center in its search for study participants for the UNITI-study.

We are happy to announce that our manuscript on "Systematic Review on Healthcare and Societal Costs of Tinnitus" has been published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) and is available online: 

• Abstract: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6881 
• HTML Version: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6881/htm 
• PDF Version: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6881/pdf

Our comprehensive review shows a gap in the knowledge about the economic burden of tinnitus on healthcare systems, patients and society. The few available studies show considerable expenses due to healthcare and indirect costs, while out-of-pocket costs appear to be less financially burdensome. Comprehensive health economic evaluations are needed to fill the gaps in current knowledge, using a unified method with reliable and standardized tools.