Effects of Herbal Sleep Formula on Patients With Insomnia and Tinnitus: Prospective, Randomized, Double-blinded Clinical Trial

Sleep disturbances were very popular in general population. The prevalence of sleep disturbances were about 20 ~30% in adults. Insomnia is a complex disease with many etiologies. For example, pressure from daily activity, psychiatric diseases, and organic diseases may contribute to sleep disturbances. Besides, insomnia often comorbid comorbidly with tinnitus, and form a vicious cycle between insomnia and tinnitus. In the aspect of treatment, besides psychological treatment, insomnia was often treated with hypnotics. Variable types of GABA agonists and/or antidepression agents, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) were often used for insomnia. However, the medical treatments for insomnia patients were unsatisfactory, and many patients search for traditional Chinese medicine and/or herbal medicine.

Tinnitus can be defined as a phantom auditory perception in the absence of an external sound source. It is a common auditory symptom with a prevalence ranges from 4.6% in a survey study in Iranian population to 25.3% in a nationally representative survey in the United States, depending on the definition of tinnitus and study populations. A recent nationwide survey of the general population of South Korea reported that the prevalence of any tinnitus was 20.7% among adults aged 20 to 98 years. The prevalence was higher in women and it increased with age. A cohort study in England indicated that the incidence of clinically significant tinnitus was 5.4 cases per 10,000 person-years.

Tinnitus can severely interfere with activities of daily living, with common comorbidities such as anxiety, irritability, depression, inability to concentration, and sleep disturbances. Studies based on both questionnaires and polysomnography reported that sleep disturbance are common in patients with tinnitus. Recently, the investigators found that the risk of tinnitus was increased in middle-aged and elderly patients with sleep disturbance and/or sleep apnea. In the aspect of treatment, GABA agonists were often used to for tinnitus, but the results are still unsatisfactory till now.

Since many years ago, traditional Chinese medicine or herbal medicine had take care of insomnia and tinnitus. Some herbal foods and/or drugs, for example Lemon Balm Extract、Rice bran fermentation extract (GABA)、L-Tryptophan, were suggested for these two diseases with various results. In this study ,the investigators aimed to investigate the effects of herbal sleep formula on the sleep and tinnitus of patients without hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis.

This project is planned to collect non-dialysis adults who suffer from sleep and tinnitus disorders and refuse to take sleeping medicines in our hospital by random assignment and double-blind method.