Promise for New Hearing Cures

As I wrote recently, continual advances in medical science may or may not prolong human life routinely well past a century, but at least we future codgers will go to our graves with a whole bunch of shiny new body parts. But what’s the point of living into your hundreds if you’re deaf as a post?

Thanks to a youthful exposure to industrial noise, I’ve lived with hearing loss (near-complete deafness in one ear) for at least half my life. You don’t realise until you lose one of them, just how precious our senses are. But new research is holding out a tantalising promise for at least some hearing loss sufferers.

New research from The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London has successfully reversed hearing loss in mice.

The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a genetic approach to fix deafness in mice with a defective Spns2 gene, restoring their hearing abilities in low and middle frequency ranges. Researchers say this proof-of-concept study suggests that hearing impairment resulting from reduced gene activity may be reversible.

This isn’t a magic cure-all for deafness, of course.

Professor Karen Steel, Professor of Sensory Function at King’s IoPPN and the study’s senior author said, “Degenerative diseases such as progressive hearing loss are often believed to be irreversible, but we have shown that at least one type of inner ear dysfunction can be reversed. We used a genetic method to show this reversal as a proof-of-concept in mice, but the positive results should encourage research into methods like gene therapy or drugs to reactivate hearing in people with a similar type of hearing loss.”

Dr Elisa Martelletti, the study’s first author from King’s IoPPN said, “Seeing the once-deaf mice respond to sounds after treatment was truly thrilling. It was a pivotal moment, demonstrating the tangible potential to reverse hearing loss caused by defective genes. This groundbreaking proof-of-concept study unlocks new possibilities for future research, sparking hope for the development of treatments for hearing loss.”

Given that my own particular hearing loss is the result of nerve damage, this treatment, at least, isn’t much use to me. But to millions of other deafness sufferers, it may be something like a miracle cure.

Over half of adults in their 70s experience significant hearing loss. Impaired hearing is associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing depression and cognitive decline, as well as being a major predictor of dementia. While hearing aids and cochlear implants may be useful, they do not restore normal hearing function, and neither do they halt disease progression in the ear. There is a significant unmet need for medical approaches that slow down or reverse hearing loss.

Science Daily

Despite being mostly deaf in my “bad ear”, I can hear something. Tinnitus, mostly.

Tinnitus, the ringing, buzzing or hissing sound of silence, varies from slightly annoying in some to utterly debilitating in others. Up to 15% of adults in the United States have tinnitus, where nearly 40% of sufferers have the condition chronically and actively seek relief.

I once mixed up a sound file, mingling a sine wave, cicada drone and white noise, to simulate the tinnitus I live with constantly. Others were quite shocked to hear it: “You mean, you hear that all the time? Doesn’t it drive you mad?” My sanity remains an open question, but if there’s relief in the offing for tinnitus? Count me in.

A recent study from researchers at the University of Michigan’s Kresge Hearing Research Institute suggests relief may be possible.

Susan Shore, Ph.D., Professor Emerita in Michigan Medicine’s Department of Otolaryngology and U-M’s Departments of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, led research on how the brain processes bi-sensory information, and how these processes can be harnessed for personalized stimulation to treat tinnitus […]

The study, a double-blind, randomized clinical trial, recruited 99 individuals with somatic tinnitus, a form of the condition in which movements such as clenching the jaw, or applying pressure to the forehead, result in a noticeable change in pitch or loudness of experienced sounds. Nearly 70% of tinnitus sufferers have the somatic form […]

“After enrollment, participants received a portable device developed and manufactured by in2being, LLC, for in-home use,” she said. “The devices were programmed to present each participant’s personal tinnitus spectrum, which was combined with electrical stimulation to form a bi-sensory stimulus, while maintaining participant and study team blinding.”

Participants were randomly assigned to two groups. One received active bi-sensory treatment for six weeks, while the other was given a control, sound-only, treatment. After a six-week break, the two groups were swapped around. Participants receiving the active treatment consistently reported improved quality of life and significant reductions in tinnitus loudness.

“This study paves the way for the use of personalized, bi-sensory stimulation as an effective treatment for tinnitus, providing hope for millions of tinnitus sufferers,” said Shore.

Science Daily