Inner Ear Hair Cell Regeneration — Maybe We Can Know More

I sometimes wonder whether a period of suffering tinnitus shouldn't cause the brain's auditory neurones to enhance or depress their interconnection strengths, as appropriate, so as to suppress the effects of over active sensory machinery such as nerve hairs and other auditory neurones and ganglia. I mean to say, if the sound sensing hairs in the auditory canal are broken or dead or missing then the pulses that create tinnitus must either be generated by the nerve endings to which the hairs were attached or in the auditory neurones. Perhaps then stem cell therapy isn't the right approach. The brain's plasticity may be a better route to curing tinnitus? There are drugs which increase the brain's plasticity in the auditory region.

 

When the "brain's plasticity" can be quantified in believable models several thousand years from now, it will certainly be the approach.

 

For people who have researched the subject of hearing regeneration and follow in detail current scientific progress, how long REALISTICALLY can we expect a "cure" to be available to the general public. I read lots about all the different projects going on and the possibility of clinical trials etc, but I am not from a scientific background and therefore I don't know how long, if ever, a treatment for hearing loss (and possibly tinnitus) will take to find? Are we talking 5, 10, 15 years away? Who knows? I suffer from tinnitus and hearing loss from an acoustic trauma, and a "cure" is about the only thing that's keeping hope going for me...

 

I think it's very hard to say, but around 2020 we will have at least 5 companies In the clinic.
And then we will know much more. So if everything goes as planned, there could be something on the market in 5 years. If you have enough money to pay for it..

 

Nice little article:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/28/a-race-is-underway-to-repair-our-hearing-with-medicine/

 

This is a pretty hopeful article. Hopefully all the competition among biotechs will speed up the process of developing effective therapies. Decibel is "focused first on hearing loss in millennials." I guess I just squeak into that demographic.

 

My only concern with so many companies trying to work on hearing loss (not saying it is amazing, I think it is fantastic and needed now with all this noise pollution and loud bar/music culture we live in) is that what if they can restore hearing loss and fix the synaptic auditory connection between the cochlea and the brain how is it that the T could eventually disappear or fade away? Some people even with no hearing loss develop T with no causes or hearing loss. I know that the result of hearing loss is T, but this is not always the case. Some people suddenly wake up with screaming T and are known to have perfect hearing?

Like Dr. Rauschecker said in his video T is located in a very high functional part of your brain.

 

Maybe believe or not, curing hearing loss is more straight forward than Tinnitus. The heterogeneity and complexity of tinnitus makes for a challenging road ahead.

 

I agree 100% it is a very complex condition.

 

I very much disagree with this statement. I'll accept that curing tinnitus maybe more difficult than restoring hearing loss. This would be because you probably can regain the ability to hear very quite sound with only a few function synaptic connection for that portion of the cochlea. And it make take many more fully connected and functional synaptic connections to completely and in perpetuity eliminate tinnitus and any future re-occurrence. But difficult does not mean the concepts are beyond our comprehension.

 

Maybe a stupid question, but if Tinnitus is more in the brain, why can we spike it with sounds in the T ear.

 

@flobo

Your hearing is not totally broken, just damaged. One can understand scenarios where part of the frequency content is interpreted right, and somehow affects to the part that is not working properly. These good and bad neurons are still sharing some of the auditory networks. This interaction produces reactive tinnitus. From my point of view, reactive tinnitus is not always negative (spiking), sometimes the interaction reduces the tinnitus sound. It is hard to say if that mechanism is in the cochlea, brain stem or the auditory cortex.

 

That is absolutely so. I never worded it like that, but yes, it often does.

 

That is a good question, yes but why is it that some people have a good ear and a bad ear and all of sudden develop bilateral T in the head? There has to be an additional cause for this. Shouldn't it be only one sided?

 

Does this happen often ? I thought people either had to in one ear or in the head from start.

 

I completely agree and I also think that the only was for us with hearing loss to cure our tinnitus is to fix our hearing first. I don't think we will ever get rid of our tinnitus on its own while our hearing remains damaged. The tinnitus is just a consequence to our bad hearing. I always look more to this thread for answers than some of the other threads.

 

I think there's some confusion over here as there's people that think that these hair cells regeneration therapies may get rid of all kind of tinnitus. Obviously, they won't since T can be triggered by so many things. That said, if your T was caused by an acoustic event (either acoustic trauma or sustained damage), regenerating new hair cells may cure or lessen tinnitus EVEN if you don't have any hearing loss that you're aware of... because you may have hidden hearing loss. If your T was caused by anything else, you should probably start tracking potassium channel opener drugs (there's a safer and more powerful version of Retigabine on the way, plus some more).

 

I was reading before that, that when one is exposed to a loud event, the nucleas membrane turns up the volume in that pitch and a "memory" is stored which leads to the phantom sound tinnitus being stuck there even when the hearing returns back to normal. If this is true, how would regenerating hair cells unlearn this memory?

 

I started with one side now both :/

You make a good point. For me it started in one side. Then a year later it crawled over the next side ( thus now in my head?). Same thing happened to my mother. She has T for as long as she can remember. She used to to get vertigo attacks and the T came along. Started out as one sided. Now she has it in both (her head?).

So I do think that yes regeneration of hair cells and synaptic nerves can help with T, my theory is that they can repair the damage (some of it at least) then the brain would have to re-learn to use the new pathways established thus can reduce T overall (maybe eliminate it).

 

Recovering auditory capacity seems to be the best start to alleviate or eliminate tinnitus. People with hearing loss usually improve their tinnitus by means of hearing aids simply because of the phenomenon of external sound shifting. On the other hand it is possible that the neurons in receiving the information that they stopped receiving modify their behavior and tend to their original state.And it is also possible that tinnitus has to be addressed in a multidisciplinary way, but it will certainly be much easier to decrease or eliminate tinnitus with a good hearing than with incorrect hearing that was the cause of tinnitus

 

Any recent news or timelines from companies starting clinical trials or when they plan on coming out with a cure for hearing loss?

From reading through this thread, it appears about 5 companies should start trials in 2020? Is that right?

Hard to follow what is going on and what the timeframes are, so would hope anyone could point me in the right direction.

 

Frequency therapeutics - should be going into clinical trials within the next 12-18 months

Acousia therapeutics (search REGAIN on google) - Start in September

Genvec - are already in trials I think (Gene therapy)

Not sure about Otonomy but news regarding their tinnitus candidate drug OTO-311 should be available in September (they passed phase one for safety)

 

https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=372587

 

50000 for peace and quiet SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

 

There are many people who would be happy to pay 50.000$ for a reliable treatment, including me.

The market is huge.
That there is no treatment available, really shows that there is nothing.
That there is only a couple of millions being invested each year, shows that there is no fantasy in the analyst minds how to get a piece of that market.

I for myself would be highly pessimistic, if I hadn't seen the good results of trobalt here on this website survey.
I really hope that the quite little effort put into deriving something really useful from trobalt is leading somewhere.
Fingers crossed.

 

Yes, totally agree, 50,000 is nothing to get you life back
I would transfer the money immediately if there was a possibility for a treatment.

The best option for a "new trobalt" is 1OP-2198 right ?

 

Yes but it's being developed for epilepsy, more potent with fewer side effects (hopefully won't turn you blue and give you milky man tits).

If it's going to be for T it would be off label use.