Inner Ear Hair Cell Regeneration — Maybe We Can Know More

Agreed, we are all on the same page. They have taken all of the research being done at Harvard and that is what is the basis for this company. What is curious is that Harvard is part of the HHF and they must also be sharing information with all of the other partners, so hopefully they have access to all of the research that has been done up to this point by the hhf. The fact that they have jumped into the market with a company is super exciting news since the clock is now ticking on all of their investment money. From everything I had read, it seemed like they would have waited for the 10 years Stanford had originally said which was two years ago, so I wasn't expecting a company to form for another 8 years. If this is happening, then they have some solid research behind them and a real hope that they will come out with something in the near future.

I personally think it will start with partial cures for hearing loss taking people from severe or profound to mild or moderate, just as the novartis trial was promising, and as they start making money in that market. They will then re-invest that money into more research for an eventual total cure for hearing loss and possibly tinnitus.

I think in order for tinnitus to go away you have to basically repair the entire hearing system to 100 percent and that is going to take the longest, at least going this route. Once you have it and you know its there and it becomes ingrained in the brain, I don't think its possible to just up your hearing and have it go away. I'm pretty sure it would require a complete cure and when its gone you won't be able to find it anymore, but I think the ear and auditory system has to be completely repaired for that to happen.

 

I wonder if there is a sort of threshold. So, damage is able to accumulate (which happens as we age: NIHL and wear and tare) up to a point where tinnitus starts. This will not be the same for different people. Some people can have hearing loss and not tinnitus and for some people an audiogram does not show hearing loss but they do have tinnitus. This only confirms complexity of the hearing processes.
What I am trying to say is: perhaps a partial repair (nerves in particular) will improve tinnitus or even stop it, but you can still have some damage in the inner ear. So perhaps tinnitus is improved sooner than a complete regeneration of the damaged inner ear.
It is all speculation.

What about Action On Hearing Loss? I don't think they are part of this. That would be beneficial. Why not one front?
Action On Hearing Loss and Hearing Health Foundation are still two big research institutions, (relative) but separate.
Geographical location is not a problem with the internet.
I could be wrong.
It would make it easer for me to donate to one research institution instead of three or four.

 

I have a theory and it was true with me. People with hearing loss do have tinnitus but they just don't realize it. I had hearing loss and tinnitus, but I never heard it because I never knew what it was. I only noticed it a few times in my life when I put completely over the ear headphones in a hearing test. It took anxiety for my T to become noticeable. The problem is that once its noticeable, and you realize you have it, its not going to go away. This is why I think you need 100 percent repair to make it go away.

Action on hearing loss is separate from the HHF. I haven't found a link yet. It would be nice if they would all collaborate together though.

 

I don't agree with this. If you have tinnitus you are going to be aware of it. The nature of tinnitus is "perception of sound when there is no external sound source". If you don't perceive it, then you don't have it!

I myself have experienced tinnitus on several occasions before the actual onset of my permanent tinnitus. Usually it was when I had been to a night club and got home. It was always gone when I woke up in the morning. This was before I ever knew what tinnitus was.

Also 99% of all people either have or will have some form of hearing loss. As people age they tend to loose hearing in the upper frequencies. However relatively few people develop tinnitus.

I will never forget when my high school physics teacher pulled out a sound generator and set it to 16 000 hz. Everybody in the class could hear it, except him. We were all 18, he was 65 at the time.

 

After my NIHL I have a different experience. I know the word tinnitus is from Latin and means "ringing".
So if you do not hear ringing you don't experience tinnitus.
Yet there are instances where I can not here a ringing (just this night. I wanted to stay awake to listen), but my ears feel full. A pressure inside my brain and/or ears as if the tinnitus frequency is outside my hearing range. So it feels like the tinnitus is still there, but I cannot hear it.
Strictly speaking this is not tinnitus. Yet I know this fullness, hyperacusis and tinnitus are related and originate from one source. That source is NIHL.
But what's in a name?
@RB2014 :
https://www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/default.aspx
They also support research.

 

I have had hearing loss since I was young which has gradually gotton worse and I'm pretty sure I have always had T now that I look back. I think my brain was blocking the signal, just like we can block the signal when we get pre-occupied with something. I remember hearing it at the sound booth at each of my hearing tests every 3 to 5 years, but after the hearing test I don't remember hearing it. For me it wasnt until I had severe anxiety that I became aware of it. It spiked, just like the time I attended a concert when I was younger, but this time it didnt go away. Again just a theory though. When I got T, I was already at moderate to severe/profound hearing loss. I really think if not for the anxiety I wouldn't be noticing it right now, but I think whatever was blocking the signal gets weaker as we get older so it would have happened eventually.

The one thing I have learned on this forum is that everyone's situation is different, but we all have T.

I think if someone could hypnotize me to forget I ever had T, the block would get put back in place, and I would be in a happier place, but again this is just a theory I have.

[QUOTE="If you don't perceiveit, thenyoudon't have it![/QUOTE]
There are many times during the day, especially when its a quiet T day when I don't perceive it for hours on end, but I still have it. This is the rational behind my thinking.

 

Hi,

Do these organizations still have the goal to cure hearing loss in 10 years? I remember them saying they planned on having a cure in 10 years or less.

 

You stated that everyone with hearing loss has tinnitus. This is just factually incorrect! Sure when put in a sound proof room about 94% of all people hear something that perhaps might be considered as tinnitus, even those with no hearing loss. Only for them it's very, very quiet and as soon as they step out of that sound proof room they don't hear it anymore. But would you say that those people all have tinnitus?

By the way, now that we are talking sound proof rooms and what happens to people in them. Do you know that there are rooms that are so quiet that the sound is measured in negative decibels?! Microsoft for instance has built a room that holds the world record in quietness. In that room the sound level is at around -20 db. They say that no one has been able to withstand more than around half an hour in the room. It's so quiet it drives people mad!

Here on earth the lowest theoretically possible sound level is around -23 db. That is the sound that air molecules make when they move randomly. If you want to go lower than that you would have to go to a vacuumed space.

 

If I understand correct 0 dB is when people start to hear sound. This is why we can get negative 20 dB levels. There is sound, but people are not able to hear it.

What about people with tinnitus? They will hear a sound and thus should be able to stay in this room longer?
Interesting fact that -23dB is the sound of molecules. I was under the misconception that people where able to hear sound of moving molecules in complete silence. But I am sure you are correct.

 

Yeah I'm curious too. It would just be like a bad T day. I bet I could stay in the room for hours on end.

 

Yes 0 db is the level at which people with normal healthy hearing can detect sounds.

I don't know how it is with people that have tinnitus. I guess one would perceive the tinnitus as even louder in such a room (no ambient noise to mask it even a little bit). The rooms such as the one I described are used by companies such as Apple and Microsoft to measure sound levels of their products. For instance Apple measure loudness of their laptops in a sound proof room like this.

Such rooms are also used by NASA. In space it's very, very quiet. The astronauts are put in such rooms to get used to the quietness.

No we cannot hear the random movement of air molecules (at normal room temperature). I'm talking about rooms with no airflow. If there is airflow then there is not just random movement of molecules. All molecules that are in a container that has a temperature above the absolute zero (−273.15° C) move randomly. One could say that heat is movement of molecules. The higher the temperature the higher the energy and the faster the molecules move. This is not to be confused with movement of air caused by airflow.

 

I've read much of the posts, and find the stem cell and support treatments in Bangkok the most interesting. However, I am about $25,000 away from the $28,000 reported fee, so it won't be happening soon.

The reason for my post here is this: almost all people here report experiencing Tinnitus after trauma to the ear via sound, or in come cases chronic illness.

In my case, in 1999, I had a severe headache 24/7 for about 3 weeks. Prior to this, I did not have T. After two weeks of unrelieved pain I started using Tylenol and Ibuprofen together, and to my surprise, it was much more effective than either medication alone. However, after a few days of final headache relief, the Tinnitus started. Then I figured I must have some kind of tumor, so I finally went to the doctor. Turns out, I had blocked sinus due to swollen nasal turbinates. Sinus surgery quickly resolved the problem, except the Tinnitus was here to stay. I went to the House Ear Clinic in Los Angeles, and they only said, not sure what caused it, but it will be with you forever now, so learn to ignore it, which I have done. It does not interfere with my life to any great degree, and judging from what I have read in this blog, I consider myself very lucky.

My point here is that I agree, I think the T is probably not caused from the ear or cochlea hairs, but probably from the hearing center in the brain because mine was apparently due to severe cerebral pressure related to clogged sinus drainage.

Maybe this alternative T induction will shed some light on the overall picture.

All the best to everyone and their path to recovery.

Jim B.

 

Hopefully not too deep in the brain and close enough to the inner ear to hope significant relief in our lifespan since very little is known about the brain.

 

It's ridiculous in this stane age that we can't treat T it's great that pharmacy companies are slowly but surely getting into it if only T had the research Cancer did

 

O

Ohh but haven't you heard?Apparently T won't kill you!

 

It has killed quite a few people tho unfortunately maybe not directly but it has

 

He's not kill Josh few people in being kill people every day specially here in USA but they don't say anything They had severe like mine I have 10 month and I don't know what else to do with this huge jet engines in my ears on the big power transformer in my head and never going down the only The only reason I am still a life is my kids and my family but they don't understand they don't care.

 

Although focused on inherited hearing loss rather than noise or age related loss, there is another entrant http://ir.agtc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=969982

Advances made using gene therapy to address inherited deafness should be helpful for other forms as well.

 

Seriously, there seems to be LOTS AND LOTS of companies trying to cure hearing loss with gene therapy and real treatments, not mechanical bologne like hearing aids.

It just seems like a cure would come along in about 10 years. Is there any "predictors" out there that say it will probably be cured in 10 years?

 

I do have one web source that indicates "most likely" it would be cured within 10 years. At first the reply was hazy, but I tried again and it was decidedly so. I'm not sure how reputable it is though.

http://www.ask8ball.net/

 

I know, but seriously though. There are predictions on many things, like technology. I'm sure someone out there, even for finance reason, is monitoring all this. There must be a general idea out there when there will be a cure/treatment for hearing recovery.

 

Yes I agree. Initially though the goal is to identify and prevent or stop this type of deafness. Regeneration is not the first step. But I can imagine that after the first steps, regeneration is the ultimate goal. Also any research dealing with the inner ear is useful and speed things up.

 

What about people with no hearing loss ?

 

And hyperacusis or tinnitus?
When I got NIHL one year ago I started to read whatever I could find on the internet. I concluded that a problem at the moment is that doctors/science are/is not able to determine what is damaged in the inner ear. New methods are getting better, but there is still a lot unknown. Just recently there are documents that talk about "hidden hearing loss". Where people complain having tinnitus an/or hyperacusis and a perfect or near perfect audiogram.
This only is an indication that there is still a lot in the inner ear that is unknown.

 

Bioengineers show why lab-made stem cells might fail: Errors in DNA folding

 

In a similar vein, iPSC from older adults have accumulated mutations which also lead to problems.

Article: http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/pdfExtended/S1934-5909(16)00067-9
Press release: https://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/news_events/news/2016/04-14-study-hidden-genetic-mu.cfm
Commentary: http://www.nature.com/news/mutated-mitochondria-could-hold-back-stem-cell-therapies-1.19752

 

I was being sarcastic

 

What about this?: "Transplanted nerve cells survive a quarter of a century in a Parkinson's disease patient"

Quote: " What we have learnt from the study of this patient will be of great value for future attempts to transplant dopamine-producing nerve cells obtained from stem cells, a new development led by researchers in Lund."
End quote.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/309879.php

 

Needed that. Thank you!

 

So any updates on novartis or participants? This thread went quite, I guess nothing is going on anymore ;/.