It’s rare, but it happens: there are babies and children with congenital deafness. Now, therapy (DB-OTO) allowed children who could not hear a moving truck to identify whispers or words with just one syllable. Others now have completely normal hearing.
Eleven children with congenital deafness (deafness since birth) began to hear thanks to gene therapy, developed by researchers from the United States and Spain.
Cases of congenital deafness are rare, but occur in two out of every thousand newborns. Some children are born with genetic defects that do not allow them to hear. But there may be a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
A therapy – DB-OTO – applied to 12 children and adolescents, between 10 months and 16 years old, it worked in 11, a few weeks after treatment.
O DB-OTO involves a single injection into the cochleaa structure in the ear. In the process, they are introduced viruses – in one or both ears – with a healthy copy of the OTOF gene.
Six children, who could not hear a moving truck, began to identify whispers and words of one or two syllables. Most cases are enough to not need a cochlear implant, devices that directly stimulate the auditory nerve.
Three children began to have completely normal hearing.
The treatment, applied for the first time in humans, was developed and financed by the American pharmaceutical company Regeneron and, according to included two decades of genetic research in Spain, especially in laboratory of Ignacio del Castillo. 20 years ago, the researcher began studying different OTOF mutations that cause congenital deafness.
The authors consider the results to be a success for gene therapy and hope totreatment trial until the end of the year.
