2023-04-24 16:00:00
On 24.04.2023 at 06:00
Modified on 04.24.2023 at 6:00 p.m.
Hearing loss affects six million people in France. At the heart of the problem are the “hair cells”, which are fundamental for hearing, but unable to regenerate themselves if ever damaged or lost. Gene therapy might be the solution.
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When we lose hearing, it is most of the time because the sensory cells present in our inner ear no longer work, or are damaged. They are called hair cells. Unable to regenerate, but responsible for the essential function of transmitting sounds to the brain, they are at the heart of scientific research trying to find a solution to treat millions of deaf or hard of hearing people around the world.
Looking for a way to regenerate these hair cells, several teams of researchers have developed possible gene therapies for hearing loss.
A cocktail that revives these essential cells in mice
Researcher Zheng-Yi Chen, from Harvard Medical School in Boston (United States), and his team, were inspired by the functioning of fish and poultry, for example, whose hearing cells can regenerate unlike those of humans, to develop a solution that works in mice. In their essays presented on April 17 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesthey are delighted to have, thanks to “a drug-like cocktail combined with a harmless adenovirus (like the RNA vaccine once morest Covid, editor’s note.)”, succeeded in training in rodents “the regeneration of new hair cells”. Medical imaging and other techniques have confirmed that hearing has returned in these mice whose cells were damaged.
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“Think of a brake when driving a car”explained the lead author of the study, in a communiqué. “If the brake is still engaged, you can’t drive. We have found a molecule that might remove the brake from this genetic pathway”.
Today, there are few solutions once morest deafness, yet there would be six million deaf people in Franceaccording the Pasteur Institute, 430 million worldwide. The people most affected by this type of hearing damage are those who are regularly exposed to loud noises, such as military personnel, construction workers and musicians.
They hope that their research may one day pave the way for clinical trials in humans, so that gene therapy (probably coupled with surgery) can be given to people with hearing loss.
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Another American study, this time from Del Monte Institute for Neurosciencepublished last January in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, also reported new gene leads to regain hearing. In the meantime, don’t forget your earplugs during concerts and remember to lower the sound of your devices (television, headphones) especially for the little ones.
You may also be interested in:
⋙ Hearing loss: what solutions to hear once more?
⋙ Hearing: where does tinnitus come from?
⋙ More than a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss, according to this study
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