How Relevant Are Rat Studies for Human Beings?

Hi.

Hope you're all well.

I had a quick question.

How relevant do you guys think studies on rats are regarding hearing loss and tinnitus?

There have been some promising studies that show tinnitus elimination in rats via various mechanism that haven't been as reliably replicated in humans and there are things tested on rats that are yet to be ready for humans.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this, on how much rat studies translate over to humans with regards to hearing loss and tinnitus...

 

While we can learn vital information from some animal studies, we must also remember that rats are not even remotely related to apes, let alone humans. Animals do not share our DNA structure or biological make up, which means sometimes animal studies can actually work against us, for example when Penicillin was tested on guinea pigs, it killed them, and almost prevented Penicillin from making it into human medicine, which we now know would have cost billions of lives and maybe even threatened the survival of our species.

Having owned rats myself for many years I can understand why science favors them for behavioral oriented studies though, as rats are very smart and do tend to give positive results in some experiments. If something is undergoing study in animals, chances are it'll be a long time till we see it used in humans.


Just my thoughts.

 

I'd start at the very beginning.
First of all, it would be necessary to investigate the histopathological changes caused by noise trauma.

 

I'd say as a break through in the sense of being able to regenerate auditory nerve cells in a mammal I think it's quite a good step in the right direction.

(I know what article you're talking about)

However, rats are very different from people. So the likely chance of any kind of treatment hitting the market is at least 5-10 years. And that's if something anything is found to be used as treatment. So I'd say 20-30 years before anything related to reversible hearing loss hits the market. And that's if there is any kind of revolutionary breakthrough happens within the next 10-20 years but I wouldn't count on it. However, I'd say in the near future there will be treatment to combat hearing loss and T. That may be me being optimistic. But I'd like to hope for the best