Is Anyone Doing Research To Cure Hearing Loss?

Yes. There is research going on about how to cure hearing loss.The Stanford School of Medicine has the Stanford Initiative To Cure Hearing Loss.
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In a blog post on their site on May 30, 2012, they discuss the Initiative.  What I found interesting was a list of some of the research into curing and reversing hearing loss.  Click on the names to see the research from the Cheng, Heller and Ricci labs. The articles are pretty technical but thank God there is research going on.
I’ve always been amazed that research has created so much success helping people with visual problems ranging from poor vision to cataracts.  There are all kinds of procedures and operations available.

For hearing problems, however,  we have hearing aids and cochlear implants and not much more. In a lot of cases, hearing aids help but can be painful to use. To me, there is nothing more frustrating than being with people and not understanding them. Hearing aids help me in quiet situations, but in a noisy environment, like a restaurant, they’re basically worthless.  They have noise reduction built in but it just isn’t effective.  After all, if you can’t hear a certain frequency, what good does throwing that frequency at you amplified?  It’s like shining a brighter and brighter light at a person who is completely blind.  They can’t see it and we can’t hear it.
What we need is a way to stimulate the traumatized cells in the cochlea so they can function normally again. That research is under way at Stanford along with research on gene therapy, stem cell therapy and molecular therapy to cure hearing loss.
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I hope they find the cure and make life much better for so many people.

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