Scientists found a way to turn hearing with genetic deafness

The gene therapy, which scientists call “vital ,, first helped both children and the congenital deaf adults reclaim hearing. The results appeared a few weeks after a single injection. The average volume of the detected sound in patients fell from 106 to 52 decibel – from the noise of the reactive engine to light rain.

The breakthrough has become possible thanks to the inner ear of the autof gene corrected using a synthetic virus. This is responsible for the transmission of sound from the ear to the brain. Without him, a person is born completely deaf. Previously, therapy was tested only on infants, but now scientists have tried on adolescents and adults first.

A total of 10 people between the ages of 1 and 24 participated in the study. Everyone had a rare form of congenital deafness associated with the mutation in Otof. The injection was held in five clinics in China – and the result did not last long. A month later, most participants began to hear and hearing until the sixth month developed with everyone.

Maoli Duan, one of the authors of the study, said, “These thousands of people can change the quality of life,” he said. According to him, children between the ages of 5 and 8 are particularly live effects. However, even a 24 -year -old participant had hearing restoration for the first time in history, genetic therapy was effective at this age.

It is also important that treatment is safe. None of the participants had serious side effects for the observation year. This leads to large -scale clinical studies and possible administration of the method in daily medicine.

Scientists will not focus on what is obtained. Now they plan to adapt the approach to more common genetic mutations that cause deafness. According to researchers, the first experiments on animals give encouraging results.

Meanwhile, Japanese scientists have recently developed universal blood for all patients. Read more here.