Hair-Regrowth Tech Reverse Cause of Age-Related Hearing Loss

Supporting the view that the enormous market of presbycusis seniors will benefit from FX -322 and other hair regeneration meds...

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/age-related-hearing-loss-hair-cell-damage/

Old prevailing view:
Presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss, is generally thought to be caused by a slowly degenerating stria vascularis, an important part of the cochlea. Prior animal research has revealed age-related atrophy in the stria vascularis does cause hearing loss, and the general assumption amongst many scientists has been this process also applies to age-related hearing loss in humans.

Newfound discovery:
The new research offers evidence to suggest age-related hearing loss is primarily caused by accumulated damage to inner ear sensory hair cells, and hair-regeneration technologies may offer new treatments.

 

This is interesting - I never realised that strial degeneration had been thought to be the primary contributor to age-related hearing loss.

 

Another article emphasizing hair cell loss vs stria in aging:

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2020/07/17/JNEUROSCI.0937-20.2020
This report upends dogma about the causes of age-related hearing loss. Our analysis of over 120 autopsy specimens shows that inner-ear sensory cell loss can largely explain the audiometric patterns in aging, with minimal contribution from the stria vascularis, the “battery” that powers the inner ear, previously viewed as the major locus of age-related hearing dysfunction. Predicting inner ear damage from the audiogram is critical, now that clinical trials of therapeutics designed to regrow hair cells are underway. Our data also show that hair cell degeneration in aging humans is dramatically worse than that in aging animals, suggesting that the high-frequency hearing losses that define human presbycusis reflect avoidable contributions of chronic ear abuse to which aging animals are not exposed.

 

It seems like hair cell loss may precede vascular loss in humans which is different than the animal models. The question does remain though, once the blood supply is gone, will it return with hair cell regrowth?

 

That's terrifying... so if the stria vascularis (blood supply) to the hair cells has died after noise or medication damage... Then does that mean the regeneration of hair cells with FX-322 may be futile? How would we know if the stria has died?

 

As far as i know, only certain toxins: like Macrolides and Platinum based chemo agents damage the stria, not noise or other ototoxins.

And it sounds like from these studies, stria damage otherwise occurs after long standing severe damage and may not be that clinically relevant.