Frequency Therapeutics — Hearing Loss Regeneration

I was referring to an N=151 study rather than a case study, but there are others that report similar results.

Just to add to this, and slightly off-topic: The frustrating thing about tinnitus treatment trials that actually have some successful responders is the sure lack of feature analysis. Even Neuromod can only give two features that are correlated with the success of Lenire (good hearing and hyperacusis). We need 1000 features; I want to know everything about them including their favorite flavor of ice cream.

 

I recommend anyone getting spooked about FREQ stock movement to not only look at the IBB (biotech index) but also randomly look at 5-10 biotech stocks.

Here are some non hearing ones I watch: NVAX, DRRX, DMTX, TCON, SRPT, HALO.

Of those, only TCON is up today.

It gives you a better idea if it's an isolated thing or not.

 

I think it's worth nothing that this was unilateral only.

I think about how the point of vestibular rehab is to train the brain to only use the good ear (I have no function in my right vestibular nerve but I can balance again because of this after prolonged physical therapy).

I think some people (clearly not everyone) with a unilateral problem's brains could selectively rely on the better ear. My thought is that this would have to be people who aren't subject to tinnitus in general except for in severe loss because the more sensitive brains can't reconcile that.

If you put healthy people in total experimental prolonged sound isolation, they get tinnitus. But maybe if you did that with one ear only, some people's brains would eventually adapt.

 

You make a fair point. Interestingly, the guy in the case report in the study I posted had normal hearing in his bad ear, except for major losses at EHF. I think they determined his tinnitus was at 10 kHz.

The inherent problem here is that the people who are going to get the cochlear nerve sectioning are people who usually have one really bad ear. Bad hearing, bad tinnitus, maybe bad vestibular function. So to your point, we don't know exactly how sensitive this person's brain is. I think that even normal brains would usually obtain tinnitus after major losses.

So the question is much better answered if we took sensitive brains with minor (or maybe even no) hearing loss and saw what happened when all hearing was removed from one side. Speaking personally, it's hard for me to picture my brain moving right along with such a procedure.

 

Has it been established this is actually a signal generation, or is it like telling someone their nose is in their peripheral vision. They become aware of something that was there the entire time?

 

I don't think they told them in advance they were studying to see if they got tinnitus if that's what you mean. I think they were just told they were studying the effects of sound isolation.

 

I wish I knew how to answer this but I'm really not sure what you are asking?

Do you mean everyone has tinnitus unconsciously?

 

Thanks for your replies. What I didn’t notice was the number of placebos in the study.

 

I have seen that hypothesis, but I don't believe it. All I meant is that there is a significant percentage of humans that have very quiet, sub-perceptual tinnitus. What you might call a 0.05/10. In a perfectly quiet space it might be brought to their conscious awareness.

 

Yeah right, everyone has tinnitus, we're just after the attention.

 

I just read part of a 36 page medical journal which gives me hope for the future if FX-322 is successful.

Page 5 suggests;

"It has been well established that atrophy of the cochlear nerve (loss of cochlear neurons) disproportionately affects speech discrimination ability rather than pure tone hearing thresholds. Studies have shown that over 80% of cochlear neurons have to be lost before there is a significant shift in pure tone thresholds, and that such severe neuronal losses are associated with a severe drop in speech discrimination ability."​

I have excellent word discrimination in noise and quiet, so its reasonable to assume inner and outer hair cell loss may be the primary cause of my hearing loss and not nerve atrophy.

Here is the journal if anyone is interested in some light reading.

DYSFUNCTION OF THE COCHLEA CONTRIBUTING TO HEARING LOSS IN ACOUSTIC NEUROMAS: AN UNDER-APPRECIATED ENTITY

 

I can't speak for others but I truly don't think I ever had any until my ototoxicity. I come from a rural area in North Florida (less than 3000 people in my hometown) and at the right time of year and time of day, it was silent out by the water (everything gets quiet around dusk so as to avoid alerting the gators as they wake up). I would go out there and look at stars and always remember thinking how really silent it was. I would listen for the smallest sounds.

Same with some places after the snow (lived in Chicago for a bit too). It just seems to blanket all the sound. Maybe it would require a degree of silence I have never had.

 

I'm afraid there is no such thing as tinnitus that you don't perceive, since its very own definition is "the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound".

If you don't perceive sound when there is no external sound, then you don't have tinnitus. What you have instead is a functioning hearing apparatus, and you should probably be happy about it.

 

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What caused your ototoxicity!?

 

Azithromycin.

 

Ohh wow, did you take it for long term?

 

I think I understand what you're saying. You're not really talking about the tinnitus of people on here, but the large number of people with very small tinnitus.

With this being said, I still doubt this is the case. Even people with mild cases will at some point at least know they have it.

 

I took it for a month when they thought my vertigo may be related to a Babesia infection (it was infectious but turned out to be viral).

 

They don't know if the drug even works. Of course they aren't going to hurry it along. Come on McFly.

 

Man that terrifies me. I’ve been super sick for a year with something that definitely seems like Lyme or babesia, and I’ve been waiting until I get my covid vaccine to then start taking antibiotics for it. But if it will potentially worsen my tinnitus there is no way I can risk that. I hate how it always feels like I’m playing chess against my health.

 

One of the most frustrating things about tinnitus is the inconsistency between individuals and seeming randomness. In 2018, I was hospitalized with a nasty infection that turned my entire body polka-dot, put in quarantine (before it was cool), and had to go on Doxycycline, and was taking NSAIDs to lower the 103.6 degree fever. It was horrible.

--Didn't touch the tinnitus.

Anxiety and a very minor acoustic shock? ---Shot it through the roof into a debilitating level.

 

I'll be honest, I used to be irritated by posts on the FREQ stock when my real urgency is finding a way to stay alive until FX-322 hits the markets, as with Otonomy delays this is practically my last hope. That irritation was wrong and was my problem, obviously, not the posters, but for some reason I felt really irritated. Sure, the financial well being of Frequency Therapeutics is important for us all and for the medication to be released soon, but how can people talk about stock market speculation when there are people suffering enormously on the brink of the abyss?

Then I thought what the hell, I might invest as well even with my tortured brain, so recently I purchased some stock. It's a win win or lose lose situation. If FX-322 works well I'll make gains that might fund the treatment. If it does poorly I will be toasted anyway. I was wondering if I should hedge the stock with a put option, as I would then invest even more, but decided against. I don't even know how liquid put options on FREQ would be if traded at all, how expensive (their implied volatility) and what kind of Greeks they have... I suspect them to be very illiquid if traded at all.

If anyone has purchased FREQ options could you let me know?

Eventually for me it's a gamble, it's a buy and hold with big tail risk. If this is a flop I'll lose all the investment, if it is the Lasik for the ear I could make very good money. I won't hedge.

I hope for everyone that FX-322 exceeds all expectations, mostly for our end of suffering, the investment is really secondary.

 

Amen!

 

The way I see this is that if the hair cell becomes damaged the chemical circuit that releases some molecules for the synapse stays open. Regrowing the hair cell and bringing back its function will stop constant push of molecules to the synapse. The fact that tinnitus disappeared after cutting the whole nerve would support this theory.

 

Health is way more important than $$$. A lot of us tend to lose sight of that.

 

A lot of healthy people lose sight of that.

"A healthy person has many wishes, an unhealthy person only has one."

 

It's on sale!

 

Profit taking going on. Investors/speculators getting cold feet.