- Affect about
30 million Americans, of whom approximately 2 million are
profoundly deaf.
- Interfere with
people's ability to communicate and affect their intellectual
development.
- Cost our society
about $30 billion every year in medical care, special education
programs and lost productivity.
PROGRESS
IN MEDICAL RESEARCH
Hearing and speech
are very complex processes involving analysis of sounds by
the inner ear and the brain. Understanding how the ear processes
sound is necessary for proper diagnosis, treatment and prevention
of deafness and hearing disorders.
How
has animal research helped people with hearing loss?
Without data obtained
from studies of the ear and its functions in animals, we would
not have the detailed understanding necessary to diagnose
and treat hearing disorders. In 1961 George von B*k*sy received
the Nobel prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work revealing
the basic mechanisms of inner ear function. Additional work
in animals has led to refinement of von B*k*sy's work on inner
ear function as well as a basic understanding of how the brain
analyzes sounds. Today we have the basis for diagnosis, treatment
and prevention of many forms of deafness and other hearing
disorders. Still, much remains to be learned.
Medical applications
of this work include:
- Diagnostic
techniques to determine the nature and location of hearing
disorders.
- More effective
hearing-aid designs.
- Prosthetic
devices, e.g., the cochlear implant or "bionic ear", to
help deaf people hear again.
- Noise control
standards and devices to protect the ear from damaging sounds.
- Standards and
procedures for prevention of hearing loss during medical
and surgical treatments.
Is
animal research still needed to find cures for deafness and
related disorders?
Our understanding
of the functioning of the ear and the auditory nervous system
is still incomplete. We are just beginning to gain insights
into the genetic and biochemical mechanisms underlying diseases
of the ear. Increased understanding of these mechanisms will
lead to new and better techniques for detecting, diagnosing,
and treating diseases and the resulting loss of communi-cation
abilities. Knowledge in this area cannot be significantly
advanced without the data provided by animal experiments.
Because the ears of many animals are similar to those of humans,
these animals are excellent models for studies of hearing
disorders. Several animal strains that suffer from hereditary
hearing disorders are providing information that may lead
to therapies for both humans and animals. Animals that have
a relatively short life span are excellent models for studying
effects of the aging process, which has contributed to hearing
loss in more than four million senior citizens in the United
States.
What
lies ahead?
Advances in many
areas: the treatment of middle ear infections (otitis media),
the most common cause of hearing loss, affecting primarily
infants and children; further improvements in hearing aids
and prosthetic devices; and advance-ments in prevention of
noise-induced hearing loss, one of the ten leading occupation-related
disorders in the United States. These and other achievements
in understanding genetic, molecular, environmental, and developmental
bases of hearing loss depend on continued animal study.
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