Development of preventive therapy of no-se-induced hearing loss through clarifying its mechanism

我们发现，先天性综合征性听力损失是由c-RET功能丧失引起的，c-RET是神经元和黑素细胞生长的调节因子。结果表明，c-Ret介导的先天性耳聋是由于小鼠内耳螺旋神经节神经元变性所致。我们还检查了c-Ret是否与年龄相关和噪音导致的听力损失有关。此外，我们还进行了流行病学研究，以调查噪音与年轻人听力损失的相关性。

We found that congenital syndromic hearing loss was induced by the loss of function of c-RET, a regulator of growth of neuron and melanocytes, in humans. We then showed that c-Ret-mediated congenital hearing loss was caused of degeneration of spiral ganglion neurons in inner ear in mice. We also examined whether c-Ret is correlated with age-related and noise-induced hearing loss. Moreover, we performed epidemiological study to investigate the correlation between noise and hearing loss in young adults.