Genome-Wide Association Study Suggests That Variation at the RCOR1 Locus Is Associated with Tinnitus

Abstract

Tinnitus is a prevalent condition in which perception of sound occurs without an external stimulus. It is often associated with pre-existing hearing loss or noise-induced damage to the auditory system. In some individuals it occurs frequently or even continuously and leads to considerable distress and difficulty sleeping. There is little knowledge of the molecular mechanisms involved in tinnitus which has hindered the development of treatments. Evidence suggests that tinnitus has a heritable component although previous genetic studies have not established specific risk factors.

From a total of 172,608 UK Biobank participants who answered questions on tinnitus we performed a case–control genome-wide association study for self-reported tinnitus. Final sample size used in association analysis was N = 91,424. Three variants in close proximity to the RCOR1 gene reached genome wide significance: rs4906228 (p = 1.7E−08), rs4900545 (p = 1.8E−08) and 14:103042287_CT_C (p = 3.50E−08). RCOR1 encodes REST Corepressor 1, a component of a co-repressor complex involved in repressing neuronal gene expression in non-neuronal cells. Eleven other independent genetic loci reached a suggestive significance threshold of p < 1E−06.

Link to full paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-85871-6

 

So can we CRISPR this shit out of us?

 

I'm too dumb. What does that mean lol. Are there even trials on this?

 

This never really crossed my mind. I wonder if it is possible for CRISPR to help tinnitus? There is hype with Neuralink with tinnitus but CRISPR might come sooner than that.

 

I could be wrong but I think CRISPR would only be useful for preventing tinnitus, since our genes have already expressed themselves.

 

Yes, it’s wrong. CRISPR gene editing does work after genes have expressed themselves. Just recently, several people have been cured of sickle cell disease and Beta thalassemia by using CRISPR.

As much as there is a huge debate about mRNA vaccines, I believe this is the future of medicine. Treatments will be able to target most diseases, cancers, viruses and chronic conditions. mRNA right now is expensive because they don’t have the vehicle to drive the treatments but once they standardize treatments, they will be able to offer mRNA medicine for almost anything at a very affordable price, just like we are seeing with the vaccines. Ironically, I feel that COVID-19 has pushed us to the next stage of medical science by forcing us to use these vaccines and offering copious amounts of funding to do so. Initially, Moderna and BioNTech existed to treat the likes of cancer and genetic diseases and once they can go back to researching those with full capacity, we will see a leap in mRNA technology, now that they have the platform aka vehicle from the vaccines.

 

I believe you can use techniques to edit adult genes based on Google.

 

I had this initial thought when I first heard about CRISPR.

If tinnitus has an identifiable genetic component, could we just rewrite them?

Someone far smarter than me should run a clinical trial.

 

Yah... it'd be a good preventative for sure.

Oh shit son, you have the tinnitus gene. Stop going to concerts.

It would avoid a lot of unneeded suffering.

 

"The paper Genome-wide association study suggests that variation at the RCOR1 locus is associated with tinnitus in UK Biobank conducted by teams based at King’s College London and the Ear Institute, University College London using data from the UK Biobank found a number of interesting candidate genes which may be linked to tinnitus, notably the RCOR1 locus."

Tinnitus UK award Marie and Jack Shapiro Prize for research into the genetics of tinnitus