Health & Medicine - Posted by Jill Pease-Florida on Wednesday, January 23, 2013 14:18 - 3 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...New way to test hearing loss drugs in people
Researchers used music to cause temporary hearing loss in people to test the effectiveness of drugs designed to prevent hearing loss. "Right now the only options for protecting against noise-induced hearing loss are to turn down what you're listening to, walk away from it or wear ear plugs, and those options may not be practical for everyone, particularly for those in the military who need to be able to hear threats," says lead investigator Colleen Le Prell. (Credit: "earplugs" via Shutterstock)
U. FLORIDA (US) — Researchers have figured out the longstanding problem of how to safely create temporary, reversible hearing loss in order to see how well new drugs work.
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“There’s a real need for drug solutions to hearing loss,” says lead investigator Colleen Le Prell, an associate professor in the department of speech, language, and hearing sciences at the University of Florida.
“Right now the only options for protecting against noise-induced hearing loss are to turn down what you’re listening to, walk away from it or wear ear plugs, and those options may not be practical for everyone, particularly for those in the military who need to be able to hear threats.”
About 26 million American adults have noise-induced hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Prevention is key because damage to hearing-related hair cells in the inner ear by loud noise is irreversible.
Though hearing aids can help amplify sound and implanted devices can restore some sensation of sound for those with more profound hearing loss, they do not restore normal hearing. Thus, researchers are trying to find drugs that prevent hearing damage in the first place.
Although prototype drugs have prevented noise-induced hearing loss in laboratory animals, it has been hard to know whether the same protection is possible in humans, largely because researchers lacked an effective method for the needed tests.
Those tests are now achievable because of the latest research findings described in the journal Ear and Hearing.
The work brings scientists closer to the development of drugs that could help protect people at risk of hearing damage—from concertgoers to factory workers and military personnel who are routinely exposed to noise.
Loud music
Le Prell’s model is the first to use controlled music levels to reliably cause low-level, temporary hearing loss in human participants. Other studies have used beeps or tones, user-selected music levels, or music exposures that don’t result in temporary hearing loss.
Three monitoring boards ensured that studies model met national safety standards for research in humans. Co-investigator Patrick Antonelli, professor of otolaryngology, provided onsite supervision of study participant safety, and collaborators at the University of Michigan and Southern Illinois University were involved in study design and safety discussions.
“Dr. Le Prell started with a unique idea to create a reversible noise-induced hearing loss and has established solid groundwork for this new model in the use of clinical drug testing,” says hearing expert Jianxin Bao, an associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study. “As for every new model, several unknown factors exist for this elegant experiment model, which requires further detailed studies.”
To induce temporary hearing loss, study participants listened to rock or pop music on a digital music player via headphones for four hours at sound levels ranging from 93 decibels—the noise level of a power lawn mower—to 102 decibels, the noise of a jackhammer.
Each participant got a hearing test four times—15 minutes to three-and-a-quarter hours after his or her listening session, as well as follow-up tests one day and one week later. Fifteen minutes after the music stopped, those who listened to the highest music levels had lost just a small amount of hearing—six decibels, on average. Hearing returned to normal within three hours.
Le Prell’s group will use this testing model in two first-of-a-kind clinical trials of therapeutics designed to determine if noise-induced hearing loss can be prevented in humans.
“We really want to find out what’s going to work and we want to make it possible for strategies that do work to get in the hands of the people who need them,” Le Prell says.
Source: University of Florida
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3 Comments
Frank Ruth
Wow, this investigation looks amazing! Anyway, there are more fields but the military one where the results of this research project could be really useful. Think about the construction workers, who have to deal with working (and traffic) noise everyday, or the policemen, who are exposed to this kind of “torture” every time they have to take care of the traffic. The list goes on and on, as this other article (bit.ly/11Xj9kg) shows.
Rose winslet
Detecting and correcting hearing loss in an infant as early as possible are the best ways to avoid developmental difficulties in speech and language. Infants are routinely screened as soon as they are born. If abnormalities show up in the first hearing test, a second screening is necessary for confirmation so the infant can receive any possible remedies as soon as possible. Studies have shown that children who get treatment early in life can develop language skills, whether spoken or signed, on a par with children who have no hearing impairment.
Reference http://www.hiddenhearing.ie/your-hearing/online-hearing-tests
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This sounds like a fun test to be a part of. I’ve been listening to loud music for years, and I definitely have some minor hearing loss. I’ll be interested in following this, as I’m looking for ways to recover what I’ve lost.