Hearing Loss Associated with Usher's Syndrome Significantly Improved in Clinical Trial

Press link: https://www.prlog.org/12657568-ushers-syndrome-improves-with-stem-cell-treatment-in-scots-2.html

Clinicaltrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03011541

Wonder if this will end tinnitus related to Usher's syndrome.

 

Personally if I read this correct, I think this could have huge implications outside just this narrow study. Because it seems to show that with a stem cell treatment of a persons own bone marrow, they saw a big improvement not only in their eye sight (the main focus of the study), but In their hearing as well.

I think this is almost a continuation of what @attheedgeofscience was doing with his stem cell treatment. Of course he was using different stem cells. But again, this proves that stem cells (of various kinds), could have a big impact on hearing and possibly tinnitus too!

 

Surely, this treatment is not growing new hair cells in the cochlea. It is regenerating nerve cells instead. Do you think so?

 

Yeah this is pretty cool. I try to avoid optimism but I think this is big. I really hope this could help lead to a treatment during my lifetime.

 

It would be awesome if there was imaging technology that could definitely answer that question/theory. Soon hopefully.

 

The article stated that it did not know what it did with the ear, that's the thing. It just said that something was happening and she regained some of her hearing. Unless I read the article wrong.

 

This looks like serendipity.
Now research needs to repeat this. Later on they can find why it works

 

There are a few things to note about this:

1) the "article" is a press release put out by the company.
2) although there is a clinicaltrials.gov entry, this "trial" not the same as a trial by Otonomy, Audion, etc.
3) being registered on clinicaltrials.gov does not mean this "trial" is FDA approved.
4) this is essentially a stem cell clinic experiment where people pay $20,000 to participate.
5) to the extent that you want to think of it as a trial, it isn't randomized, placebo controlled or anything else.
6) It's definitely beneficial for the people running the trial: if they get $20,000 for the 500 people they say they want to enroll, that's $10,000,000. On top of the the 300 people in the first SCOTS "trial".
7) Some people have claimed that they have lost their sight in the trial:

(https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ates-and-critics-push-back-on-fda-guidelines/) There aren't press releases about these cases.

There's more discussion here https://ipscell.com/2016/02/study-t...s-into-eye-charges-20k-raises-many-questions/ (there are comments from people who claim to be both helped and harmed), here https://www.sciencealert.com/a-blin...thanks-to-a-controversial-stem-cell-treatment, and here http://www.stemcellsfreak.com/2013/02/md-stem-cells-scam.html

Perhaps there is something going on here, but in the absence of some restrictions on inclusion (beyond having $20,000 to spend) and standard trial protocols it isn't clear what can be learned.

 

Thank you very much for that update @Aaron123

 

Two drugs widely used by man ... impotence and baldness, were discovered looking for other solutions ... you never know!

 

Here is an update on the SCOTS study with bone marrow derived stem cell (BMSC) therapy, published in November 2017.

Results: Following therapy in SCOTS, 80% of patients experienced improvement in Snellen binocular vision (P=0.029) with 20% remaining stable; 73.6% of eyes treated gained vision (P=0.019) and 15.9% remained stable in the post-operative period. There was an average of 3.53 Snellen lines of vision improvement per eye with an average 22.74% and maximum 83.3% improvement in LogMAR acuity per eye. The average LogMAR change in treated eyes was a gain of 0.364 (P=0.0089). Improvements typically manifested no later than 6 months post procedure.

http://sci.amegroups.com/article/view/17421/17703

 

Hey, it was the same way with trobalt. It wasn’t designed for tinnitus but it helped very much. Just too bad about all the side-effects.