Deafness, an old ailment of human beings, have not been yet found with a perfect cure and thus the scientists worldwide are struggling hard to find a cure for the same. As they say, hard work leads to success; similarly scientists finally have been able to grow a gene that can lead to the treatment of deafness. This new gene is basically aims at growing ear hair that can improve the hearing abilities.

This recent study was carried out by neurobiologist John Brigande of the Oregon Health and Science University, in Portland, who surprisingly had been hard of hearing since the age of ten. To carry out the experiment, he implemented this gene therapy on mouse embryos that were prone to loose hearing as adult mouse. The gene, called Atoh1, was implanted inside the inner ears of the mouse and it converted non-sensory cells to hair cells and thus boosted up the hearing of the mouse.

“There is intense interest in cell replacement strategies to ameliorate the effects of inner ear disease, but until now we didn’t have direct evidence indicating we could make a functional sensory hair cell,” informed Dr. Brignade. 

Thus the study has led to the conclusion by the American scientists that this novel gene therapy has the ability to grow the kind of cells that are missing or damaged in deaf animals. The experiment carried out o mice, also showed that when this gene was injected inside the mice, it rapidly grew the production of ear cells that convey sound to the brain.

The structure of a human ear is really complex. The deafness is primarily caused when the sensory hair cells inside the inner ear called cochlea, are damaged. These cells actually are responsible to carry the sound waves to the brain, after they had been converted in electrical impulses. Nerve deafness is another name for Hearing impairment, which can be caused due variety of causes, including, infections, aging, genetic diseases, loud noise or treatment with certain drugs. A normal human ear at birth has around 30,000 ear cells, which if damaged are supposed to be lost forever, as they can’t grow again.

However, the recent studies conducted in other parts of world too have come to same conclusion that deafness could be cured with implantation of gene that promotes hair cell growth. The study, which is one of its kinds, if show similar results in humans too, then most of the humans who are suffering from deafness, can find a way to make their lives better.