According to a new paper released by German researchers on Monday, it may be that custom music therapy could relieve the effects of tinnitus. The condition refers to when people experience ringing in their ears, without any external source creating the noise. This sound running in the background is experienced by most individuals after a loud concert, but in some cases it is permanent. The German group believes that music therapy, specifically tailored for each patient, could ease the condition.

Tinnitus is a problem especially in industrialized and rich nations. Here, there are very high levels of background noise at all times, and people are generally exposed to more intense sounds 24/7. Factory workers have it the worst off, followed closely by teenagers who play their personal music devices too loud. In the European Union, policymakers are proposing the introduction of a decibel limit in mp3 players, in a bid to prevent millions of future tinnitus cases. It is estimated that between one and three percent of the general population in the developed world experiences tinnitus, or will do so in their lifetimes.

In their investigation, the researchers separated study participants in two groups, each of which were given songs to listen to. The playlists were based on each of the patients' own musical preferences, but there was a catch. While people in the control group were given 'placebo,' unaltered songs, those in the test group were handed songs that had been altered. The experts isolated the frequency of their tinnitus, and then used a notch filter to cut the same frequency out of the song they customized.

After one year of study, participants in the control group, who listened to normal songs, experienced no improvement in the loudness of their tinnitus. In the case of patients in the test group, all of them reported that the ringing in their ears got much dimmer. Full details of the experiments appear in the latest issue of the respected journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study was conducted at the Westfalian Wilhelms-University, in Germany, under the supervision of expert Christo Pantev. He is based at the university's Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis.

He believes that the intensity and loudness of ear ringing can be adjusted in most patients “by an enjoyable, low-cost, custom tailored notched music treatment.” This line of research is of great interest to policymakers in the EU and elsewhere at this point. The authorities are trying to gather as much evidence as possible, to support their future decisions, Reuters reports.