Deaf People May Soon Hear Again, Scientists Say

London — Deaf people could one day have their hearing restored through a ground-breaking gene therapy technique, scientists reported yesterday.

They showed that they can trigger the growth of new hair cells in the inner ear that are crucial to hearing as they pick up sound vibrations.

In tests on mice they showed that stimulating these usually irreplaceable cells to grow resulted in new cells that helped detect noise.

Researchers believe the approach could eventually be used to improve or restore hearing to the 9 million people in Britain classified as deaf or hard of hearing.

Dr. Mark Downs, of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, said: "This is an exciting development which completes another important piece of the jigsaw in understanding how we might use gene therapy to eventually restore hearing loss.

"It is no longer a pipedream to talk about cell and drug-based solutions. There is a long way to go, but the journey towards new treatments is certainly under way."

Humans are born with about 12,000 hair cells in each ear and they form a ribbon of sensors along the length of the cochlea, the organ of the inner ear that detects sound.

The death of the cells over the years accounts for most types of acquired hearing loss. People, like all mammals, are unable to regenerate damaged or lost hair cells.