Hair cells Truth Or Dare

That particular article is from almost 5 years ago. While it has some interesting statements, is there anything more recent?
 
I think this is something that would work for me. I think this is part of the reason why I became deaf. :dunno:
 
I know this will work for me - I had a virus that resulted in a high fever that robbed me of my hearing hair cells at only 4 years old. I'm hoping to see very successful results in this study.
 
C-NICE said:
Hair Cell Regeneration for Hard of Hearing People—Looking Beyond the Hype
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I have realistic expectations. CI isn't a cure and stem cells might not be a (complete) cure, at least not for a while. I expect stem cells to repair/regrow some of my damaged hair cells and I ask for a 20db improvement in my hearing. My audiologist said if my hearing was 20db better I would hear almost perfect with HAs. I have seen many audiograms and if I could have their audiogram, id hear as well as they do. I will quote the article below.

Since then, research on hair cell regeneration has accelerated. In the past 3 or 4 years, researchers have made remarkable strides towards one day being able to regenerate hair cells in people with hearing loss.
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Many scientists are now saying by 2020, it will be a reality. It could happen sooner and it may already be happening in other countries anecdotally.

First, hair cell regeneration will not help all people with hearing loss. For example, hair cell regeneration won't help deaf people who lost their hearing before they acquired speech. This is because brains wire for sound during the first 6 years of life. If a person doesn't hear any sounds during this time, their brains never develop the necessary auditory capability to understand speech. Thus, even if their ears could grow new hair cells, these hair cells would be useless to them because their brains wouldn't know how to process these new sound signals.
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Wrong! Many prelingual people benefit just fine from CIs or even from newer, more powerful HAs. I am living proof of this. I was born deaf and I still understand some speech and most sounds. I just don't expect to understand speech 100% as good as someone born hearing but I can still achieve a huge improvement with stem cells.

Furthermore, hair cell regeneration won't help people with conductive losses such as are caused by middle ear infections or otosclerosis, nor will it help people with auditory nerve conditions such as acoustic neuromas. Also, hair cell regeneration will not help people with hearing loss if their hearing loss is caused by the absence of certain genes that result in hearing loss even though adequate numbers of hair cells are present. That's the bad news.
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Most conductive losses can be cured today and besides HAs do a great job anyway, especially since conductive loss is not as bad as sensorineural losses. Most conductive losses are mild to moderate. Stem cells can repair damaged auditory nerves. As for genes, if a HA helps, so will CI or stem cells. If you had normal amounts of hair cells and still can't hear then a HA won't help, the damage isn't your hair cells but your auditory nerve or even your brain.

The good news is that the majority of people with hearing loss have a sensorineural type of hearing loss that maybenefit from hair cell regeneration.
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Which is what I have and which is what HAs help me with.

Second, hair cell regeneration is still a long ways off—several decades at least. It is not just around the corner. As of 2004, the most realistic time frame is still 20 or more years in the future. Dr. Rubel, perhaps the leading researcher in the world today on hair cell regeneration, says, "My most hopeful prediction is 20 years, and that's being very optimistic.
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He should take a look here: http://www.alldeaf.com/hearing-aids-cochlear-implants/68345-cbr-center-regenerative-medicine-looking-children-under-age-18-months.html

Third, once hair cell regeneration is possible, the public has been lead to believe that treating hard of hearing people will result in them having normal hearing once more. However, if you carefully read the reports as they come out, you begin to realize that researchers are not talking about hard of hearing people receiving normal hearing through hair cell regeneration. They are talking about "growing enough hair cells where hearing aids could be used more effectively and provide much more acoustic information"6 than would otherwise be possible.
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That's fine with me. An improvement is an improvement. CIs don't restore normal hearing either. I would love to be HOH instead of profoundly deaf because then I can get much more acoustic information as the article says. Id also have some ability to hear louder sounds unaided that I otherwise can't being deaf.

In fact, Dr. Rubel expects that hair cell regeneration, far from leading to the demise of hearing aids, will actually make them even more common and useful. He explains, "Hair cell regeneration will, if anything, increase the population of people who could benefit from hearing aids."7
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Then audiologists/dispensers have nothing to fear as they won't go out of business. Although the CI companies will need to stop making CIs and start offering stem cells as a cheaper, better, safer alternative. Plus you get to keep your residual hearing unlike CI which destroys it.

This is because a normal human ear has between 16,000 and 30,000 hair cells, yet hair cell regeneration researchers are talking about only being able to grow a few hundred hair cells8—not the thousands upon thousands needed for normal hearing. Obviously, regenerating a few hundred hair cells is a drop in the bucket and will in no way restore hearing to normal—better hearing, yes, but not normal hearing.
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Normal ears have 15,000+ hair cells, I might have 2000 cells left. Growing another 1000 cells will be a huge improvement for me and other profoundly deaf people. I realistically expect 20db of improvement in some frequencies, hopefully the lows as they are most important. I have seen others with 20db more hearing than I have and they hear with HAs as good as people hear with CIs. Phi4sius was able to understand 100% speech when he had a 50-100db sloping hearing loss(I have 70-120db). I hope to improve to his level of hearing(20db better than mine) and hope to get at least 75% speech understanding.

Did you know that even in the animals that God designed to naturally regenerate hair cells, hearing does not return to normal? For example, researchers used loud noise and antibiotics to produce a 70 dB loss in chickens. When these chickens regenerated hair cells to replace the damaged ones, their hearing returned, but not to normal. They had a permanent 23 dB hearing loss.9 Most studies on birds have reported mild permanent hearing losses and mild to moderate tuning (discrimination) impairments.10
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This is why people should be realistic. Just like CI, stem cells probably won't give perfect hearing. They point out even chickens with superior natural ability to regenerate their own cells, even they still don't get perfect hearing! The best case scenario, you might eventually be able to hear at about 25db loss in the far future when stem cells becomes a very advanced, mature technology. But who needs HAs with 25db loss? Most audiologists won't even fit such a mild loss.

Thus, even though much hearing returns, the regenerated hair cells are not as "good" as the originals. Before and after photomicrographs of hair cells are revealing. Before noise damage, the hair cells are symmetrical and beautifully ordered. Later, pictures taken of regenerated hair cells show them as irregularly shaped and the stereocilia (the "hairs" of the hair cells) look like they were all hashed together—not beautifully arranged like before.11
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As ive said, you need realistic expectations. Because residual hearing is improved, not destroyed it's much safer, cheaper, better than CI. If your CI doesn't work or is worse than what you hear with HAs, there's no going back to HAs. With stem cells, any improvement is an improvement period! :D:cool2:
 
First, hair cell regeneration will not help all people with hearing loss. For example, hair cell regeneration won't help deaf people who lost their hearing before they acquired speech. This is because brains wire for sound during the first 6 years of life. If a person doesn't hear any sounds during this time, their brains never develop the necessary auditory capability to understand speech. Thus, even if their ears could grow new hair cells, these hair cells would be useless to them because their brains wouldn't know how to process these new sound signals.

Wrong! Many prelingual people benefit just fine from CIs or even from newer, more powerful HAs. I am living proof of this. I was born deaf and I still understand some speech and most sounds. I just don't expect to understand speech 100% as good as someone born hearing but I can still achieve a huge improvement with stem cells.
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Deafdude......."hearing" with CI or hearing aids is totally different from what hearing people think of when they think "hearing"
The hearing that CI and hearing aids give you is only a very pale imitation of what hearing people hear. It's exactly like the idea of "vision" that legally blind people have. They may have some vision.......but it's generally not the way a sighted person thinks of as sight.
 
It's true that stem cells technology will probably represent a wonderful new route for treatment of several pathologies, most of them being lethal. In the case of hearing losses, besides the uncertainties on when it will become a reality, we should take in mind that it won't be just putting something in the ear, or taking a pill.
Treating hearing losses by stem cell regeneration will be linked to surgery, pharmacological treatment and there will be a success rate to be evaluated from nothing. Moreover nobody can state right now if the final results can be comparable to what we have at the moment with HAs and CIs and nobody can state if the "quality of hearing" can be really comparable to that of people born hearing.
Some of the potential concerns I see here are the same that somebody is pointing out against CIs, for example. But we must remember that CIs have a 20 yr history and now they can be considered a valuable solution (while not the cure).
We will probably need to wait 20 years to see the stem cells regeneration to be applicable to humans, then other 20 or so, to have a real perspective of what this technology will be capable of, the real risks and the success rate and if we will finally and really have a "cure".
 
We will probably need to wait 20 years to see the stem cells regeneration to be applicable to humans, then other 20 or so, to have a real perspective of what this technology will be capable of, the real risks and the success rate and if we will finally and really have a "cure".
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Actually I just thought of another reason why stem cells are still mostly " potential" You know.......in its entire existence humans have never cured a disabilty. They've ameiraliated them, yes.....but they've never cured them.
 
deafdyke said:
Actually I just thought of another reason why stem cells are still mostly " potential" You know.......in its entire existence humans have never cured a disabilty. They've ameiraliated them, yes.....but they've never cured them.
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Good point.
 
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