Professor Walter Marcotti and his team has received a £540,000 grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to develop new therapeutic strategies to address Age-related hearing loss (ARHL), an area where effective treatments are currently lacking.
Hearing impairment is a significant global issue, affecting approximately 432 million adults today, and this number is expected to reach 1 billion by 2050, according to the World Health Organisation. ARHL is the most common sensory deficit in humans and one of the most widespread chronic conditions among older adults. ARHL can lead to reduced hearing sensitivity, difficulties understanding speech, and challenges in identifying where sounds are coming from. Hearing aids and cochlear implants can help but they cannot restore important hearing features which can lead to poor speech recognition - especially in a noisy environment such as a restaurant.
The large impact of ARHL on human health is mainly due to the continuous increase in the average lifespan of the population and to the fact that our ears are ill-adapted to cope with several environmental impacts associated with modern society, such as noise and the use of life-saving medical treatment (aminoglycoside antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs).
Despite the fact that ARHL is expected to affect the quality of life of almost 10% of the world’s population, and the importance of good hearing for healthy ageing, social integration and mental health, we do not have a treatment for this progressive degenerative disease.
Professor Walter Marcotti
School of Biosciences
The symptoms of ARHL excludes people from basic day-to-day communication, which is associated with significant psychological and medical morbidity, including social isolation and depression. Mid-life hearing loss is also linked to a higher risk of developing dementia.
The research will focus on identifying molecular targets in the cochlea that are crucial for the acquisition and progression of ARHL, and the development of therapeutic interventions (AAV-based gene rescue) aimed at preventing or slowing down the progression of hearing loss.