Five children who were born deaf have had their hearing restored in both ears after taking part in an “astounding” gene therapy trial that raises hopes for further treatments. The children were unable to hear because of inherited genetic mutations that disrupt the body’s ability to make a protein needed to ensure auditory signals pass seamlessly from the ear to the brain. Doctors at Fudan University in Shanghai treated the children, aged between one and 11, in both ears in the hope they would regain sufficient 3D hearing to take part in conversations and work out which direction sounds were coming from.
Within weeks of receiving the therapy, the children had regained hearing, could locate the sources of sounds, and recognised speech in noisy environments. Two of the children were recorded dancing to music, the researchers reported in Nature Medicine . View image in fullscreen A screenshot of footage showing one of the trial participants during auditory tests at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Photograph: The Eye & ENT Hospital of Fudan University/The Lancet Dr Zheng-Yi Chen, a scientist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a Harvard teaching hospital in Boston that co-led the trial, said the results were “astounding”, adding that researchers continued to see the children’s hearing ability “dramatically progress”. The therapy uses an inactive virus to smuggle working copies of the affected gene, Otof, into the inner ear. Once inside, cells in the ear use the new genetic.
