Objective  To investigate the differentially expressed non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) and their corresponding regulated messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in patients with subjective tinnitus.

Methods  High-throughputsequencing analysis was performed on peripheral blood samples from 37 patients with subjective tinnitus (tinnitus group) and 20 healthy volunteers (healthy control group) to identify differentially expressed long non-codingRNAs (lncRNAs), circular RNAs (circRNAs), and mRNAs. The regulatory pathways of ncRNA-miRNA-mRNAwere matched using public databases. Additionally, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) wasused to detect the expression of selected ncRNAs and mRNAs in peripheral blood samples from another 10 patients of tinnitus group and 10 healthy controls to verify the universality of the differential expression.

Results  Significant differential expression of 13 lncRNAs, 596 circRNAs, and 38 mRNAs were found in the peripheralblood in the tinnitus group. The 13 differentially expressed lncRNAs did not match any corresponding miRNAs, and thus no subsequent mRNA matching analysis was conducted. The 596 differentially expressed circRNAswere successfully matched to 58 miRNAs and 595 mRNAs, among which only one mRNA (TOMM7) exhibiteddifferential expression in this study, with corresponding circRNA and miRNA being circ_0051120 and miR-615, respectively. The qPCR results showed a significant difference in the expression level of circ_0051120 betweenthe two groups (P < 0.05), while but there was no significant difference in the expression of TOMM7 (P > 0.05).

Conclusion  The circ_0051120 may play a crucial role in the occurrence and maintenance of subjective tinnitusby regulating the expression level of TOMM7, thereby affecting mitochondrial autophagy, over-activating the NF-κB signalling pathway, and influencing neural network stability.