January 10, 2013 (The New York Times News Service) -- Boston
researchers have for the first time used a drug to regenerate
the delicate hair cells that sense sound in the ears of adult
mice, in a promising initial step toward a potential treatment
for hearing loss. Hair cells damaged by loud noises or lost
during aging don't regrow in people, but in the mouse
experiments published on Wednesday, the scientists coaxed new
cells to develop, enabling the animals to recover modest
hearing. The deaf mice were far from cured; the improvement in
hearing was much less than could be achieved by an existing
technology, called a cochlear implant. But researchers not
involved in the work said the results, published in the journal
Neuron, were important because they showed such regeneration was
possible and suggested a similar nonsurgical approach could one
day be tested in people. "What's really novel is that they
showed you can use a pharmacological agent, basically a drug, to
get some level of hearing recovery in animal