Sad Truth? Hope Lost in a Cure or Treatment Anytime Soon?

I came upon this article and lost hope in a cure or treatment anytime soon.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/joycecohen/noise-kills-when-everyday-sound-becomes-torture

It's commonly assumed that the ear recovers from excessive noise, the kind that causes temporary muffling or ringing. "We now know definitively that is not true," says M. Charles Liberman, a professor of otology at Harvard Medical School, who also heads a hearing research lab at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. Exposure to noise — noise that was formerly considered non-damaging — causes massive degeneration of the cochlear nerve that progresses over time.

The ear is an organ of exquisite complexity, containing the three smallest bones of the body and two tiny muscles. When sound hits the eardrum, the vibration moves through the bones to the little round inner ear, or cochlea, which includes rows of delicate hair cells, called stereocilia. These hair cells send signals along the auditory nerve to the brain.

That's the nutshell version. It's impossible to actually reach inside the ear, which is encased deep within the temporal bone, the hardest bone in the body. "You can't biopsy the inner ear," Liberman says.

After loud noise exposure, "even if the hair cells recover" — the hair cells being the rows of stereocilia that respond to sound — "the nerve fibers that take the information to the brain don't," Liberman says, and the damage is insidious. "Even though the nerve fibers disconnect from the sensory cells very quickly, most of the fiber doesn't die for months to years."




H. Engström, courtesy of Aage Møller.

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Hair cells in a monkey ear — one row of inner hair cells and three rows of outer hair cells — show damage after exposure to intense impulse noise from a gunshot.


The ability to recover from acoustic injury drops with increased exposure. "We don't know why, but that fact is incontrovertible," Liberman says. In other words, after the first concert, the muffling and ringing go away, and you're fine. And the same after the second. But maybe the 20th concert is the one that breaks the camel's back. "Noise risk is an incredibly complex equation."

The vast interpersonal difference in susceptibility to noise damage could be due to a gene variant. Actually, it's likely that numerous genes are involved, Liberman says. Attempts are underway to identify the susceptibility genes for noise-induced hearing loss, though it's unclear whether this could help in identifying susceptibility to tinnitus or hyperacusis.

"You can have identical exposure and get absolutely huge differences in the amount of damage," he says. "Tough" ears can withstand plenty of noise, while "tender" ears can withstand surprisingly little. The problem is that it's impossible to tell, until it's too late, who's at risk.

One hypothesis about how noise can cause pain is that there are "stretch-sensitive fibers in the eardrum." Another involves nerve fibers that run between ear and brain; most are covered in myelin, but there are also some unmyelinated sensory fibers that connect the cochlea's outer hair cells to the brain. "We don't have a clue what they do," Liberman says. "One speculation is that they are actually auditory pain fibers."

But ultimately, all these theories are just that. "We really don't understand tinnitus and hyperacusis at all," Liberman says. "We are so far from understanding that it's not productive to make anybody think there's an answer."

 

Yeah. This is a horrible problem.

 

That article is from 2013. Even though that's not an incredibly long period of time i think it's safe to say that a lot of research has been done since then. Is cure around the corner? Probably not. But it's not unlikely that within 10 years from now at least some form of treatment will be available. Don't let this drag you down!

 

@AmericanJosh Agree with your entire posting, but infections and toxins can also break the camel's back along continued exposures to noise.

 

An incredibly brutal (honest) account of just how bad Tinnitus and hyperacusis can get, written with total truthful integrity.
Very important article for anybody who wishes to know and understand the truth.

(Agony aunts need not apply.)

 

They're working. Decibel therapeutics is actively researching this. Hopefully they have a eureka type of day at the lab and they figure out how to turn the switch. It could have already happened the news just hasnt gotten out via a published medical paper. I really think decibel has something up their sleeve. I spoke over the phone with someone at Decibeltx and even though he didnt reveal anything significant he did seem as if they have more than nothing. Theyve also raised alot of money lately. I have hope they will figure something out soon. What's good about them is that their technology will have applications in all kinds of other diseases, and it will all start with us, people with hearing damage.

 

This is why we need to focus research into finding the exact spot in the brain that triggers tinnitus and burn it out with a laser.
Trying to figure it out the other way is just way too complicated and there are way too many variables.
This would be a short cut of sorts.
It would no longer matter whether tinnitus was caused by noise, trauma or ottotoxic drugs...just burn the POS out of the brain.

 

Liberman said this in 2013


This was discovered in 2015-2016
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/new...e_cells_warn_brain_of_damage_to_the_inner_ear
https://www.ata.org/news/news/hyperacusis-related-damage-nerve-cells-inner-ear

OHC's get damaged and trigger hidden cochlear pain receptors. Please keep up to date with research and stop parroting hopelessness.

 

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/the-search-for-a-cure-responses-from-dr-roland-schaette.2062/

Prominent tinnitus research Roland Schaette said this in 2013 and the same year published his ear plug experiments about the central gain mechanism of tinnitus.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3366980/
(ear plugs in silent chambers induce tinnitus, showing evidence of higher brain functions compensating for hearing loss)

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4208401/
this hypothesis for tinnitus came a long in 2014.

What about the results of Susan Shore's devive in the clinic now?

I don't know why Dr. Liberman said that, or if his stance has changed following his more recent papers on hidden hearing loss that he wrote.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4842978/

It's a hypothesis, not a theory or guaranteed to happen but it seems more optimistic then what he said in 2013.

If your going to post negative opinions by researchers fine, but just please show the full side of the story.

 

Hopefully regenerating hair cells will restore normal neuronal signalling, allowing the neurons to begin the process of healing themselves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remyelination

 

regenerating hair cells will not repair the damaged other hair cells that still function half ass

 

im not wishing for a total magic cure for hearing loss, i just want to do undo a good degree of damage that happened during my acoustic trauma and the research seems to be saying it will soon be possible.

 

Do we absolutely know that yet?

 

yes, it's obvious if you understand how progeinotors divide and grow into new hair cells the process doesn't mention anything else.

 

It is the first time I saw a scientific saying tinnitus (or at least hearing loss) is degenerative... Do You know it is real ?

Many people have it for years and years without getting mote damages...

 

I am not trying to be hopeless, but realistic. Most things take many, many years to get to market unless there is an unexpected discovery. Regarding hair cells, we still have no idea if they will repair damaged ones, if the new hair cells that are grown will replace the damaged ones in that frequency, if the new hair cells will function as the current ones (it is also realistic to expect that they won't since they weren't meant to regenerate), and if the targeted intervention works without causing uncontrolled growth and similar side effects, such as a tumor.

I am not saying hope is lost and agree much progress has been made, but there are many theories out there and still so much to learn about the mystery of hose the ear operates and how sound is interpreted.

 

What if the new HCs outnumber the damaged ones and override their messed up signalling?

 

i encourage you to read about the works of Frequency Therapeutics and hearing health foundation, birds and reptiles naturally can regenerate hair cells so this process is hardwired into nature.

Frequency already has evidence there regenerated hair cells come with synaptic connections connecting to the auditory nerve, but you are right we do not yet know how they will work in human trials.

 

that's what im hoping.

 

It worked in the mice.

 

mammals just have a shit protein that prevents hair cell regeneration

 

If they weren`t made to regenerate, why would we have progenitor cells in the cochlea?
I´m sure at some time, during evolution, it did this naturally. But as we did not really need to regenerate our HC throughout time(voices and knocking stones together, can only do so much damage) nature/evolution shut this off. Our ears are like a big construction company, but nothing is being done cause there are no workers there. Frequency TX put the workers there!

 

There are neural progenitor cells in the auditory nerve.

 

That's what they believe they've found but there is no proof yet that these can be targeted to actually create replacement working cells. If they inject something to make new ones grow, we have no idea what will happen. Will they only replace those that are damaged, will they create new ones and hypersensitive hearing, is there a ways to selectively target microscopic hair cells? There is so much yet unknown. While they have come far with multiple theories (and some interventions like AM101 didn't work), there is still a lot of things that are unknown.

 

uh yes, there is.

 

Please cite the study that shows they are able to target human ear hair cells and these cells turn into replacement working hair cells as that is what my first sentence said.

 

AM-101 was a acute hearing loss agent disguised as a tinnitus treatment.

 

But AM-101 failed in clinical testing so I don't see how that supports your position. They didn't even get it to do anything, must less determine any side effects.

 

Can Inner Hair Cells be damaged but OHC be ok?