Researchers Identify New Cause of Age-Related Hearing Loss
One in every three people in the United States aged between 65 and 64 years, suffers from hearing loss, and almost 50 percent of those are aged 75 years and above.
For the last six decades, it has been believed that age-related hearing loss, also called presbycusis, is primarily driven by impairment to the stria vascularis, the so-called cellular battery powering the mechanical-to-electrical conversion of the signal of the hair cell.
New research of ear tissues of a human upends that perception and recognizes a new cause of age-related hearing loss, bringing in new directions for treatment currently not being accepted.
A group of researchers has shown that age-related hearing loss is a result of hair cell impairment. Medical research describes the hair cells as the sensory cells found in the inner part of the ear.
It is the function of the sensory cells to turn sound-induced vibrations into the electrical signals which the auditory nerve sends to the brain.
ALSO READ: 3 Things You Need to Know about Home Cholesterol Test Kits
How does this condition take place?
Age-related hearing loss occurs from irreparable impairment in the inner ear, where the sound is transduced into electrical waves.
Primarily, the inner ear, the part from which most hearing damage types originate, cannot be examined through biopsy.
More so, its constructions or formations can only be resolved in specimens taken out during autopsy.
According to experts, comprehending the real cellular causes of this condition affects the manner future treatments are conceptualized and developed, not to mention, the manner right candidates will be determined.
More so, understanding such causes can suggest too, the manner of preventing or minimizing this most typical type of hearing impairment explained the study authors led by postdoctoral research fellow Pai-zhe Wu, MD.
DON'T MISS THIS: Scientists Are One Step Closer to the Detection of Early-Stage Cancer Through Blood Tests
A Condition Commonly Impacting Older Adults
Essentially, age-related hearing loss is among the most typical conditions impacting seniors or older adults.
The study has it that about one in every three people in the United States aged between 65 and 64 years, suffers from hearing loss, and almost 50 percent of those are aged 75 years and above. This condition is irreversible and frequently needs hearing aids or other devices that amplify sounds.
In previous research conducted in animals, it was suggested that such a condition is a result of an excessively vascularized bundle of ion-pumping cells found in the inner ear, adjacent to the hair cell.
Findings Present Vitality of Protecting Ears
The data also showed that degeneration hair cells in aging individuals are remarkably worse than in animal subjects of presbycusis.
Relatively, lab animals are said to have been aged in enclosures where sounds are controlled. Here, subjects are not exposed to a continuous blast of moderate to high-intensity sounds or noises surrounding them--both that can be chosen to listen to, and those that are unavoidable.
One of the authors of the study, Charles Liberman, Ph.D., said that the greater hair cell death in the ears suggests that hearing high-frequency losses, defining presbycusis may be avoided, mirroring primarily accumulated damage from the surrounding noise exposures.
Liberman also said that it is possible that if a person is more careful about the protection of his ears during extended activities involving a lot of noise, or totally getting rid of them, We could all hear better even in the old age.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Heartburn Medication and Its Link to COVID-19
Jul 22, 2020 09:12 PM EDT
