Inner ear specific, noninvasive sound therapy to prevent ototoxic drug induced hearing loss: A preclinical study

Friday, November 08, 2013 — Poster Session III
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.	FAES Academic Center (Upper-Level Terrace)	NIDCD	CLIN-26

* FARE Award Winner

Authors

S. Roy
M.M. Ryals
A. Botty
T.S. Fitzgerald
L. Cunningham

Abstract

360 million people worldwide are suffering from hearing loss which has direct impact on the quality of human health and life. Ototoxic drugs like aminoglycosides and cisplatin are toxic to the mechanosensory hair cells. A critical need exists to develop an ear specific noninvasive co-therapy which would protect hearing against the exposure of ototoxic drugs without interfering with the primary drug. Induction of heat shock proteins (HSPs) inhibits both cisplatin and aminoglycoside induced hearing loss. We hypothesized that sound conditioning would induce HSPs in the inner ear without causing permanent damage and inhibit ototoxic drug induced hearing loss. We developed a sound conditioning strategy that would induce HSPs by non-traumatic stress in the inner ear. The data shows that sound exposed mouse inner ear has a robust protective effect against cisplatin and kanamycin induced hearing loss and hair cell death. Taken together, these data indicate that sound therapy may have an important application to treat against ototoxic drug induced hearing loss and has a high potential for clinical translation as it is non invasive and non-toxic to the inner ear. Most importantly it is inner ear specific, which highly reduces the chance of interacting with other primary drugs.