ACEMg
ACEMg is one of the most heavily marketed hearing supplements, a combination of vitamins A, C and E with magnesium. Its headline success rate comes from a chart review with no randomised control group, by authors tied to the product, and both of its randomised, placebo-controlled trials found nothing.
Don't buy ACEMg, or any other hearing supplement, to protect your hearing. Spend the money on a hearing test and good earplugs.
What it is
ACEMg combines three antioxidant vitamins (A, C and E) with magnesium. It is sold as a targeted remedy for oxidative stress in the cochlea, the snail-shaped hearing organ of the inner ear, on the idea that noise and ageing damage the cochlea's sensory hair cells partly through oxidative damage.
The 75.3% claim
The figure that circulates is that 75.3% of users kept or improved their scores on otoacoustic emissions, a test of how well the cochlea's outer hair cells work, against 26.8% of an untreated group. It is not a measure of hearing thresholds. It comes from a retrospective review of clinic records, and the untreated group was a historical one rather than a randomised one. It was published in an integrative-medicine journal by authors tied to the product, and they concede in their own conclusion that other explanations cannot be ruled out.[1]
Comparing treated patients with past records is the design that manufactures effects out of who happened to take the product. It cannot show that the supplement did anything.
The randomised trials were null
The trial usually cited enrolled 51 patients having cochlear-implant surgery, to see whether the supplement protected what was left of the hearing in the operated ear. It was randomised, placebo-controlled and double-blind.
Among the 49 analysed, hearing loss at 500 Hz three months later was 4.15 dB smaller with ACEMg than with placebo — a gap fully compatible with chance (the plausible range ran from 12.95 dB in ACEMg's favour to 4.65 dB against it). The full paper states that no advantage over placebo could be demonstrated, though its abstract is more upbeat. The trial stopped early when the supply of study drug broke down, and it has never been repeated. The 8 dB figure sometimes quoted from it comes from a re-analysis restricted to people who followed the protocol, and that was null as well.[2] That trial was about protecting leftover hearing during surgery, not about age-related hearing loss.
A second randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial gave the same combination, with β-carotene as the vitamin A, to adults with normal hearing before loud music. It made no difference to the temporary hearing loss the music caused, and short-lived tinnitus was reported more often in the supplement group.[3]
The diet evidence doesn't help it
A review of 33 observational studies on diet and hearing found small links between lower hearing loss and a few nutrients, but vitamins A, C and E and minerals all showed nothing.[4] The same holds for the wider category: no oral supplement, Audifort included, has been shown in a randomised trial to preserve human hearing. The dietary signal that does exist points to an overall eating pattern, covered on Hearing.
What to do
- Skip hearing supplements. None has randomised evidence that it protects hearing.
- Put the effort where the evidence is: a hearing test, treating loss that affects daily life, and filtered earplugs around loud noise.
Further reading
- Seifer BS et al. Impact of the ACEMg Biomedicine on Sensorineural Hearing Loss and Auditory Function: Analysis of Real-World Clinical Data. Glob Adv Integr Med Health 2026.[5]
- Scheper V et al. Randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial investigating the effect of antioxidants and a vasodilator on overall safety and residual hearing preservation in cochlear implant patients. Trials 2020.[6]
- Le Prell CG et al. Dietary supplement comprised of β-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and magnesium: failure to prevent music-induced temporary threshold shift. Audiol Neurotol Extra 2016.[7]