Thursday, January 22, 2009

Gene Associated With Age-related Hearing Loss Identified

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — "Presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss, accounts for 30 percent of all hearing loss. So, why do some people lose their hearing as they get older but other people can still hear a pin drop?
"This is the first ever and largest genome-wide association study for age-related hearing loss," said Rick Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., lead author and House Ear Institute principal investigator and surgeon at the House Clinic.

The study was conducted in collaboration with colleagues at the Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Affymetrix in Santa Clara, Calif., and the University of Antwerp, Belgium. It uncovered several genes, but one gene stands out and is believed to put people at risk for hearing loss as they age."

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