South Korean Clinic Treatment (Dr. Minbo Shim)

@EddieA said PRP injections into his neck also reduced his tinnitus.

 

FrequencyTx has patented their methods and they haven't published anything yet. Also their method uses a drug, PRP is from your own blood. Very safe. Contains high concentrations of growth factors that are involved in tissue healing and regeneration.

So far the only risk here is the intratympanic injection, which is a common procedure performed by ENTs. PRP has been shown in studies to accelerate the healing of eardrum perforations.

 

That’s not enough to prove anything though, John. Again, there are far too many variables. Having yellow teeth can also lead to lung cancer, although it’s smoking that causes yellow teeth.

You need to cast a more critical eye because you are coming at this from a point of view of wanting to believe it’s true which a sure fire way to fall foul to many cognitive biases, especially the confirmation bias.

 

I don't see your logic here friend.

At the end of the day, you're just accusing him of being a liar and a fraud.

 

The anonymous testimonies where you can’t see anybody’s face? How weird is that. And those audiograms are strange. On some, there are instances where the other ear gets worse but isn’t highlighted, and there’s one where he puts the dates the wrong way round on the before and after.

If you believe him, even with the vacuum of validated evidence, then that’s your choice, but I’m highlighting my concerns on this thread for the benefit of others. It’s almost as if he has a cult following; even though nothing he is saying has been validated or even proven.

You need to be more objective with your reasoning. I think you are too emotionally involved.

 

Edward, we know about your concerns. You have repeated them many times.

It's not a cult following, that's ridiculous. It's a matter of the fact that we have tinnitus, a horrible life destroying condition, and we are looking for a way to heal ourselves and some of us simply don't believe that the only source of truth about medical treatments comes from governments and corporations.

 

It shouldn’t be anyone’s job to prove his legitimacy, though. If he doesn’t see any value in doing a study, (and then publishing his results to a journal), but can take people’s money doing experimental stuff on their ears, then yea, that’s a huge red flag.

I don’t have to accuse him of anything. All I’m asking is where is his proof of efficacy?

In all honesty, I’m seriously struggling to see what it is about him that’s keeping you all so invested. He has a google presence that James Bond would be proud of.

I haven’t posted anything on here for well over a month. I had another look and thought I’d try and bring another perspective. It’s very pro-Shim, and I don’t think he warrants this kind of respect (yet).

 

Wrong way around...? That's... really small to worry about.

Also, most people here are individuals that are desperate to have help. Some have taken action to do something about it themselves, and some of those people have had PRP. Those people have had good results. You're right to suggest that we shouldn't blindly trust an approach, and should have some good examples of effectiveness and science to back it up. But, we already have both, and we have somebody, John, who is more qualified than most people here to read through and interpret the data.

I get that Shim is a bit unorthodox, and has an approach that us westerns aren't uses to, but the science surrounding this is sound, and some people here have had success from similar treatments. At the very least, it is worth investigating. "Everything looks weird and I don't understand why he's not doing things traditionally" is not a valid reason to stop looking. Once again, he is a licensed ENT who has been around for YEARS and has provided quite a lot of information about his treatment already.

I appreciate John's work. He has worked tirelessly reading about this treatment and PRP in general. Originally, he was skeptical, nervous about the idea. However, something happened in the many hours of research to have given him a changed mind.

I would hope that people would work on this equally as hard as him so we can have a reasonable discussion and an objective conclusion. However, we aren't going to get anywhere if we start questioning each other's value, intelligence, hard work, and go on arguing over petty stuff. I would prefer it if everyone was polite and actually worked together productively.

 

Oh, trust me, despite my large quantity of posts showing the supposed validity of his approach, I still have my own reservations. Otherwise I would have gone there long ago.

 

I dont think anyone is suggesting he is a fraud, it just seems like it would benefit him as much as his customers to do proper testing.

 

I agree totally, and he may already have. He has released testing data, it's just not published in a peer reviewed medical journal and leaves a lot of questions for us.

If he would publish that would be awesome. However, I'm sure he's very busy and usually publishing is done at the academic level, and he is running a clinic.

Trust me I would love to see some peer reviewed published data about this exact method. Unfortunately all we have is many published peer reviewed papers that implicate growth factors and stem cells in the restoration of hearing in animal models and a small handful of human trials where the subjects had SSHL, not just SNHL. Also, none of these studies report a reduction in tinnitus. However, experiments with cochlear implants and earplugs show evidence that restoring lost hearing input to the brain will reduce or eliminate tinnitus.

 

I totally get where you’re coming from, but a lot of the decision making is being made from an emotional standpoint which affects objective reasoning (confirmation bias). He is taking money for a concept that has no scientific backing, and in his own words says he is in no rush to publish anything! I’m sure he isn’t if people are paying him to be experimented on.

He could (and should) have published something years ago just on a moral basis, in my opinion. And if you’re going to use testimonials, don’t make them anonymous! Why aren’t there any third party posts, or reviews, on any forums or websites? It’s next to impossible to validate anything, and I’ve never known it to be this hard to find independent patient testimonials about anyone. What he is claiming is groundbreaking stuff, so it should be really easy to find information on him, and on others who have had his treatment. He has been going for years, so why is it so difficult? I should be falling over information about him but that couldn’t be further from the truth; the truth is that there is an information drought.

 

Which unfortunately makes it meaningless. You cannot put any bearing on that whatsoever.

I spent many hours researching this guy and couldn’t find anything that made me believe he is worth paying, and that alone should be disconcerting. Google any Dr who is proven in their field and the results will light up like a Christmas tree. You will be spoiled for choice with patient testimonials, research data, published works, etc.

I’m only questioning Dr Shim. I can’t see any arguing or anyone being impolite, so we’re all good on that front.

 

I think if hes done 5000 of these procedures, and posted a test trial of his results then that would indicate proper testing.

I think what you are desiring is that he get his tests posted in a peer reviewed medical journal, and then get it trialed and verified by a government regulatory agency such as the American FDA.

 

Says who?

This stuff has to be verified to be trusted and believed. Otherwise one is free to make up anything they want.

 

Koreans barely ever use Google.

 

You missed the point: to Google is a turn of phrase and if relevant information is out there, something should be found.

I also used Naver extensively and found nothing of note.

 

It's not made up, there is a massive amount of corroborating evidence that his method is sound. And again, you're jumping from a lack of published material into accusing him of making up his data, which is lying, which is fraud. It is obvious you think this man is a total fraud. However all that being said, it would be nice to have the 5 o'clock news come out and proclaim intratympanic PRP injections have been verified and proven to heal the damaged cochlea.

 

I think...…

The reason cochleas don't heal on their own is because cochlear fluid is lacking in platelets which contain growth factors that are a requirement for wound healing.

 

That sounds like a reasonable hypothesis.

 

There’s nothing to convince me otherwise, and I can’t see why there’s such a big interest in him.

Where does a study say they have successfully regenerated hair cells in humans? They have proven the potential for hair cell regeneration, but nobody has anything conclusive. It’s all potentials. I’d say we are on the cusp of a breakthrough, but as of now, nobody can claim to be able to regenerate hair cells in the cochlea. A direct quote from the study you linked to, which I’ve read in detail, clearly states this:

In this study, we showed that hBMSCs have the potential to differentiate in auditory hair cell-like. Current findings point about the importance to the application of BMSCs in the regenerative medicine for the inner ear. Recent developments in biology and rapid advances in the field of stem cell biology are expected to lead to the resolution of problems that prevent successful mammalian hair cell regeneration.

However, they have shown that BMSCs can be effective for SNHL caused by a loss or impairment of fibrocytes in the spiral ligament. An excerpt from another study explains why this can be a cause for hearing loss:

Together, these findings suggest that impairment of fibrocytes caused by the loss in otospiralin leads to abnormal cochlear physiology and auditory function. This moderate dysfunction may predispose to age-related hearing loss.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC543414/

I think you are looking for what you want to see. If anyone had successfully regenerated hair cells in humans - that had clinical significance - it would have been headline news around the world. It would also seem pointless for Frequency Therapeutics (and all the other companies trying to regenerate hair cells) to spend millions on research looking for a breakthrough.

 

can you actually verify that in a living human being without extracting and dissecting their cochlea and looking at it under a microscope?

also, Novartis's Cgf-166 has been shown to restore hearing in living humans, and the basis of their drug is to inject the cochlea with a virus made to deliver the gene atoh1, which triggers hair cell regeneration.

 

No. Which means there haven’t been any clinically significant audiograms, either.

I’m really interested to see how all these drugs turn out. Hopefully they are efficacious.

 

YES,
THERE ARE.

"Based on the result of the phase I/II clinical trial described in 5.1., a randomized clinical study was performed (UMIN000004366). Treatment with intra-tympanic steroids, which has been widely used to treat systemic glucocorticoid-resistant SSHL (Choung et al., 2006; Haynes et al., 2007; Ho et al., 2004; Kakehata et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2010; Plontke et al., 2005; Roebuck and Chang, 2006), was chosen as the control treatment (Nakagawa et al., 2014). Patients who had been diagnosed as having SSHL and who had no recovery after systemic glucocorticoid treatment for more than 7 days were recruited within 25 days of SSHL onset. Patients (n ¼ 120) were recruited from nine tertiary referral hospitals in Japan and were randomly selected to receive either gelatin hydrogel impregnated with IGF1 on the round window membrane (62 patients) or intratympanic injections with Dex (58 patients). The primary outcome measure was the proportion of patients with improved hearing (10 dB in pure-tone average hearing thresholds) 8 weeks after treatment. The secondary outcome measures included changes in pure-tone average hearing thresholds over time and the incidence of adverse events. In the IGF1 group, 66.7% (95% CI, 52.9e78.6%) of the patients showed hearing improvement compared to 53.6% (95% CI, 39.7e67.0%) of the patients in the Dex group. There was no significant difference between the proportion of patients with improved hearing in each group (p ＝0.109), primarily because an unexpectedly high proportion of patients showed hearing improvements after Dex therapy compared with previous reports (Choung et al., 2006; Haynes et al., 2007; Ho et al., 2004; Kakehata et al., 2011; Nakagawa, 2014; Nakagawa et al., 2014; Plontke et al., 2005; Roebuck and Chang, 2006). A trend, however, was observed: a higher proportion of patients with 30 dB HL improvements in pure-tone average hearing thresholds was measured for the IGF1 group than in that the intra-tympanic steroids group. The difference in changes in pure-tone average hearing thresholds over time between the two treatment groups was found to be statistically significant (p ＝ 0.003). In this trial, no adverse events were observed. The findings of this trial suggest that IGF1 is an effective treatment for SSHL and that IGF1 is a similar or superior therapy compared with intra-tympanic Dex therapy"


Source:
Insulin-like growth factor 1: A novel treatment for the protection or regeneration of cochlear hair cells Kohei Yamahara, Norio Yamamoto* , Takayuki Nakagawa, Juichi Ito Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, 54 Shogoin Kawahara-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-
8507, Japan

Ed, you do realize that just because you're not aware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right?

 

This is for SSHL? It’s a specific condition/subset. I thought we were talking about regular hearing loss which most people on this forum have/may have. Scientists don’t know the reason behind SSHL; they can only speculate, and 1/3 of people can recover their hearing from SSHL with no treatment at all. Also, you’ve posted this before, so I’ve already seen it.

According to my audiograms, my own hearing has recovered by 25dB at 8khz, and anywhere up to 20dB at other frequencies. I haven’t done anything other than take NAC, Magnesium, and B vitamins. Like Dr Kohan said in that article: we need better designed and controlled studies.

 

id say that there is a good overlap between SSHL and SNHL.

 

Where have we gotten the idea that sudden hearing loss and noise induced are that separate? Seems like the same result to me. I can understand steroids being effective under a time window, but we aren't talking about that. Ultimately, damage is damage, and I question why we are treating PRP like the steroids. Why would they be looking for an alternative in the first place if there is still a time limit? It sounds like PRP has different effects.

 

There’s a lot of speculation that it could be viral or vascular.

 

If an individual thinks he is a fraud or scam artist, so be it. I do not.

He is an ENT who never claimed to restore full hearing loss, he actually makes no more claims than a little better, is better than nothing. If one has a cash, one goes, like Arseny or any one paying huge amounts for SC in Thailand or Switzerland . Nobody is gonna be satisfied here, that is obvious. If he changed his testimonials and website, he would be accused of dodgy antics. I am also cautious and one should always be careful not to be hustled or taken. Having said that, I believe the doctor can help some and some may not respond well to the treatment. Like many conditions that afflict humans.

If your ears are shot and you got the cash... you go. Remember, the patient will have to heal up before they fly, so it is not just the injections, it is also accommodation and food for 1 month and incidentals. Put all that together, it ain't cheap, as much as 15 to 20 grand quite possibly, if you needed 3 rounds of injections, as I would. Around and around we go. Just read the posts about stem cell treatments in Thailand which cost an absolute fortune and are not administered into the tympanic membrane. This guy has done the procedure and I would trust him more than an ENT that has never done it. Pick your poison according to your budget.

 

For me, he said that I could have half a treatment in each ear for half the price and it'd work enough. He also said I could have a flight out the next day, which I was surprised of. He did 50% sales before, at least twice. Not sure if he'd do it again, but that would be $2,000~ each ear for me. I would probably just do two half treatments and then come back again some other time in future if needed. I expect that it would work out later on.

Of course, Shim might actually publish his papers in America and have some approved people do it here like he suggested by then, but I don't know. What I do know is, I don't have much money and I need it as soon as possible. :/

Originally his treatment was much more expensive. I'm happy that he's at least trying to improve it and reduce price.