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Age related hearing impairment or presbycusis is a prevalent
issue in our society and the number one communication problem among the older
population
a multidisciplinary team of researchers conducted a nine year study
through the global center for hearing and speech research and has now pinpointed
the gene linked to hearing and speech processing.
Robert Frisina, one of the lead researchers at the University of South
Florida explains the discovery.
So that's where the breakthrough came, after that hard work
we have found a gene that
we have good evidence is involved in age related hearing loss and that's
the first time in our field that
anyone's identified and
really nailed down
the function of gene.
The study has shown that the function of that gene,
(GRM7) changes over time for different reasons affecting the quality
of the sound conversion process.
Every cell in your body as all your genes
and the genes main job is to make proteins and the proteins are what make
all of our cells work.
So, if you have
a change
in one of your genes
it can cause a problem with the function of the protein.
So what we've identified here
is the gene that makes the protein for the inner ear,
where the cells in the inner ear
convert sound
into the code of the nervous system so that you can hear.
As you get older
you not only lose sensitivity to sound
but your brain gets older too
and it can't sort out
all the different sounds as well as when you're young.
In this particular gene we really saw relations between how sensitive you
are to hearing
and the different variations of the gene.
The research included a comprehensive range of hearing tests and a compilation
of DNA and family medical history information.
So we not only used tones when we assess
the hearing
of the participants in this study but we also use speech
sounds so we've got some relations between the speech processing and the
different variations of this gene that we identified. The study focused on the
natural hearing process without other possible causes of hearing loss.
So genes and environment interact,
hormones would be examples what we call environment in this case.
So we tried to take those environmental
factors out so that we were just left with the genes and the age related
hearing loss and we were able to compare those.
The team discovered GRM7 after a limited study in europe uncovered a
broader group of genes that could possibly be related to hearing loss.
It's kind of a two-step process now to really get breakthrough in human
genetics you need some clues
because you have roughly forty thousand genes,
where do you look?
So we had a clue from this other study that
this might be a gene involved in age related hearing loss. And then we took
that second
breakthrough test
where we really nailed it down with comprehensive hearing tests
and much more sophisticated
mathematical and statistical analysis and genetic analysis to really
present enough evidence that yeah,
this really is the first gene
involved in it related hearing loss.
The discovery has real implications for early treatment options to prevent
age-related hearing loss.
There are many lines of research
not just in hearing but in all neural systems where
if we know the problem, we know that the protein is being made a little bit
incorrectly
there are ways right on the horizon now in the next decade where we're going to be
able to compensate
or correct
for that protein.