A Cure for Deafness? I'm all Ears!

Photo credit: Jeroen Flickr

Great news for all you boomers with 'rock and roll deafness'. A recent BBC News headline reads "Deaf gerbils 'hear again' after stem cell cure".  The study, first reported in Nature, used chemically charged human embryo stem cells to create spiral ganglion neurons (the nerve cells which, when damaged, account for about 10% of human hearing loss). If they could replicate these results in humans it "would mean going from being so deaf that you wouldn't be able to hear a lorry or truck in the street to the point where you would be able to hear a conversation." Wowser.

Not as cute as fitting gerbils with teeny tiny hearing aids, but far more hopeful.