Restoring
the inner ear is obviously important and welcome. This reports that serious progress is now been
made and the next decade could produce a successful working protocol to essentially
eliminate deafness by simple regrowth. I
got this item from an investment newsletter named Energy and Capital.
We
are now seeing a wide spread of stories that all are all focused on replacement
therapy and that all is about growing back damaged parts of the body. It is also clear that while the big targets
are taking longer, that is not so true for smaller targets.
I
am expecting a rapid and full migration out of artificial prosthetics into
restored body parts. This will include
actual regrowth of whole limbs although that is likely to be the last
achieved. Yet nerve regeneration can
change that prospect also..
A Miracle of Biblical
Proportions
By Jason Stutman | Monday, May 12th, 2014
At two years of age, the
average child has a vocabulary of about 100 words. By two and a half, they will
know close to 300 — and will likely be talking nonstop.
This sudden acquisition of
new words is what experts call the “naming explosion.” And despite the common
complaint from parents during this time that they can never seem to get a
moment of peace, it's something to remain incredibly appreciative of.
The fact is, if your child
isn't able to spit out this many words by age three, chances are high there's
an underlying medical issue at hand.
Take Alex Denworth, for
example. At 20 months, Alex could speak only four words: "Mama,"
"Dada," "hello," and "up."
At first glance, this may
have seemed like an issue of intelligence. But Alex wasn't mentally disabled by
any means. In fact, he was fully engaged and competent with his toy trucks,
building blocks, and just about every other typical toddler activity you could
think of.
The medical issue Alex was
suffering from actually had nothing to do with his mental wit, but was rather
an issue of hearing: Alex suffered from a deformity in his inner ear known as
Mondini dysplasia alongside a separate and progressive condition, Enlarged
Vestibular Aqueduct.
In short, this meant Alex
was profoundly deaf in his right ear and moderately deaf in the left. More
alarmingly, it meant that a simple bump on the head or sudden change in
pressure would cause even further hearing loss.
To the dismay of his
parents, Alex couldn't ride on a plane, swim, or even step into an elevator
without the risk of going completely deaf.
“A Miracle of Biblical
Proportions”
Upon being diagnosed, Alex
immediately became a candidate for a cochlear implant, a small but complex
electronic device that provides direct stimulation to the auditory nerves of a
patient's inner ear.
Unlike standard hearing
aids, which only amplify sound, cochlear implants turn sound waves into
electrical waves the brain can interpret.
Cochlear implants in their
crudest form have been around since the 1960s, but it was only recently that
they became precise enough for patients to identify individual words or even
enjoy the sounds of music.
Today, these implants are
advanced enough to completely change a patient's way of life. In the case of
Alex Denworth, the procedure was described by his father as “a miracle of
biblical proportions.”
And if those words are not
enough, here's an image of a child hearing for the very first time:
If that's not absolutely
precious, I'm not quite sure what is.
Still, cochlear implants
are by no means perfect. While it's enough to make most patients completely
elated, what's actually heard is largely distorted — regular speech ends
up sounding something like the Dalek robots from Dr. Who.
If the above reference
isn't familiar, neuroscientist Gary Housley puts the issue into clear,
scientific terms: “Cochlear implants are very effective for picking up speech,
but they struggle to reproduce pitch, spectral range, and dynamics.”
To tackle this hurdle,
researchers are finding new and exciting ways to regrow the natural mechanisms
of the inner ear. In particular, Housley and fellow researchers are currently
investigating the use of cochlear implants for gene therapy.
The group has recently made
a breakthrough by demonstrating how to successfully regenerate auditory nerves
using a combination of electrode stimulation and gene vectors.
Without getting too
technical, Housley and company were able to regenerate nerves and show a better
response to sound in guinea pigs, an animal with both a similar cochlea size
and structure to humans.
Ultimately, the study
suggests the ability to use cochlear implants to naturally improve the hearing
of human patients in the near future and quite possibly bring about a cure for
deafness.
Perhaps even more exciting
is the fact that the world's first human gene therapy trial will take place
just two months from now. The trial, led by Kansas Medical Center's Hinrich
Staecker, takes a more conventional approach than Housley's electrode stimulation
method, using a harmless virus to deliver gene therapy.
In Staecker's own words:
"The holy grail is to give people natural hearing back. That's what we
hope to do — we are essentially repairing the ear rather than artificially
imitating what it does."
The trials follow
successful results from last year when Staecker's team was able to use the same
virus to deliver a gene called Atoh1 to improve the hearing of mice by 20
decibels. That's about the difference between cupping your hands over your ears
and then taking them off again.
Incredibly enough, deafness
is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to regenerative medicine. At this
very moment, there are several small companies we're aware of working with
similar methods to cure blindness and even regrow tissue damaged from
heart attacks.
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