Low Heritability of Tinnitus

Abstract

Objective The role of genetic factors in the aetiology of tinnitus is not yet settled. Objective of the present study was to estimate the heritability of tinnitus. Design Self report questionnaire data from The Nord-Trøndelag hearing loss study (an integrated part of the HUNT study) was used. This is a health screening in Nord-Trøndelag county, Norway, including all inhabitants aged 18 and older (N=51,574) with overall response rate 62.8%. The study also included information on first-degree family relationships. Age corrected polychoric correlations between relatives’ tinnitus status were calculated. A structural equation model was fit to the data, and the relative contributions of genes and unique environmental effects were estimated. Models including sex-specific effects were also tested. Subjects Frequency and intensity of tinnitus including information from a population based sample of 12,940 spouses, 27,607 parent-offspring and 11,498 siblings, was used. 27,792 respondents were tested twice yielding a test – retest correlation of 0.65 for the report of tinnitus. Results Correlations for parent – offspring ranged form 0.01–0.07 for the various sex combinations, sibling correlation ranged from 0.06–0.14 and the spouse correlation was 0.04. This family correlation pattern implies an upper limit for heritability of 0.11 with no sex differences in the heritability estimates. Conclusions This is the first large, population based family study to report on the heritability of tinnitus. In contrast to previous speculations in the literature this low heritability indicates that additive genetic effects explain only a small proportion of the variance of tinnitus in the population.

A Pilot Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Potential Metabolic Pathways Involved in Tinnitus

“…The standard error of the estimate was 9.2%, which leads to a confidence interval for the heritability ranging from 0 to 21%. The previously reported heritability of 11% by Kvestad et al ( 2010 ), falls within this 95% confidence interval. Moreover, the GCTA-GREML method implemented in GCTA only accounts for the additive genetic effects of the SNPs in the GWAS.…”

“…The lack of large international studies into tinnitus genetics is possibly attributable to the general assumption that tinnitus is a symptom rather than a trait with few genetic factors involved. Interestingly, a recent longitudinal twin study (Bogo et al, 2016 ) estimated the proportion of additive genetic factors in tinnitus at 40%, which is substantially higher than the 11% previously estimated by Kvestad (Kvestad et al, 2010 ). Together with the results from the current study, the idea seems to emerge that the role of genetic factors in tinnitus is larger than initially assumed, and that the identification of SNPs involved in tinnitus is feasible if sufficiently large sample sets of well-characterized tinnitus and control subjects are collected.…”

Genetic susceptibility to bilateral tinnitus in a Swedish twin cohort

“… 4 For instance, there is no clear evidence of a dependency of tinnitus prevalence on ethnic background or geographic area. Kvestad et al reported sibling–sibling correlations ranging from 0.06 to 0.14 ( N = 11,498 siblings), 7 consistent with another European multicenter study ( N = 981 siblings) that identified a sibling–sibling correlation of 0.16. 8 In one study, the likelihood of developing tinnitus for persons with a sibling with tinnitus was 1.7-fold higher than for individuals without.…”

Sex-Dependent Aggregation of Tinnitus in Swedish Families

“…The present findings showing a high familial transmission of severe tinnitus may explain the low heritability of tinnitus reported in previous studies [10,11]. In one of the studies, tinnitus was defined as "Nowadays, do you ever get noises in your head or ear (tinnitus) which usually last longer than five minutes?…”