(NewsNation) — A gene therapy trial has allowed some children in China who were born entirely deaf to hear for the first time.
Reported in the journal Science, researchers from Fudan University fitted the children’s inner ears with an implant that contained a harmless virus carrying a new genetic code.
According to the researchers, four of the five children could hear after the treatment.
All of the children were born deaf due to inheriting two defective copies of a gene. This gene controls how the body makes a protein that gives hair cells in the inner ear the ability to transmit sounds to the brain.
At least one of the children in the trial had previously had a cochlear implant that allowed her to hear and learn to speak but could hear naturally after the trial. While cochlear implants can enable some deaf people to hear, they don’t allow for the same spectrum of sound as natural hearing and come with other side effects and limitations.
That particular form of deafness is rare and is only responsible for one to three percent of cases of deaf children.
Children born with hearing loss may face barriers when developing communication skills and miss important developmental milestones if they aren’t provided with support from the start.
The trial is not the only effort to use gene therapy to treat deafness. Another trial in Cambridge is also attempting to find a solution to deafness related to the same gene.