Treating “deafness” with gene therapy
Another world breakthrough: A young British boy born deaf has treat with innovative gene therapy, a breakthrough innovation. That is pioneering a new way to treat hearing loss, instead of traditional hearing aids.
Opal Sandy, a nearly one-year-old British girl, is one of the lucky ones.
After six months of receiving innovative gene therapy, she is not only able to hear clearly, but she is also learning to speak words, such as calling her parents “Mama” and “Dada” and making the exclamation “Ooh-ooh”.
In this treatment, doctors instilled a solution into Opal’s ear, allowing the drug’s ingredients to replace the damaged DNA that causes her https://ufabet999.app genetic hearing loss. Opal is one of a group of patients from the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain. Who have selecte to deafness take part in the gene therapy trial. In addition to these three countries, teams around the world, including in China, are studying similar techniques to correct the Otof gene mutation that causes her hearing loss.
Professor Manohar Bains, an otolaryngologist and lead researcher, said it was amazing to see the baby start to respond to sound. It was a very exciting moment. Experts hope that this gene therapy technique could use to treat other types of hearing impairment, especially severe ones.
Professor Banz says that more than half of all children who are deaf have a genetic defect, and he hopes his experiments will lead to the development of new gene therapy techniques to treat hearing loss due to the most common causes. “Our hope is that we can use gene deafness therapy on young children to the point where they can actually restore their hearing, without the need for cochlear implants or other technologies that require constant replacement.”