Could Gene Therapy One Day Cure Hearing Loss?

Hearing aids help you hear better, but they can’t restore your hearing to a previously healthy state. Will it one day be possible to completely reverse hearing loss? Possibly. A company called Novartis is attempting to use gene therapy to restore ears damaged by overexposure to noise.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

The most common type of hearing loss is sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by damage to hair cells in the inner ear that send sound information to the brain. Once these cells are damaged, they can’t spontaneously restore themselves, but Novartis is hoping to change that.

In studies, researchers are injecting the inner ear of human volunteers with a virus that contains genes that will hopefully turn on the ear’s ability to repair itself and grow new hair cells. In trials involving rodents, mice injected with similar genes experienced a 20% improvement in their hearing acuity.

As you might expect, such a procedure is not without risk. The procedure requires a thin needle and the help of a laser to inject the virus into the cochlea. As a result, Novartis is testing the procedure on people who are almost deaf and have little hearing left to lose. Other drawbacks might be the expense of the procedure and the fact that in mice studies they only saw 20% improvement. The results of human trials won’t be available until 2017.

Even if the results of this novel therapy are positive, it probably won’t completely restore hearing for most people. It’s doubtful such a procedure, even if approved, will make hearing aids obsolete any time soon. Fortunately, hearing aids are becoming more and more sophisticated, especially with the introduction of digital hearing aids. The size of the average hearing aid is smaller than the outer portion of your ear. Hearing aids currently on the market fit discretely behind the ear or completely inside the ear canal.

If you’re having problems hearing, why not get a hearing test and explore some of the new options available?

Reference:

Hearing Aid Know. “Human gene therapy trials for hearing loss have started.”