While medical science and the health community have huge problems and too often focus on death management rather than enhancing life, it is breakthroughs like this that give hope that all is not lost. A medical miracle of hearing for this end-of-February Feel-Good Friday.
A novel gene therapy approach has given five children who were born deaf the ability to hear. The method, which overcomes a roadblock presented by large genes, may be useful in other treatments, according to researchers.
The work, conducted in Fudan, China, by a team co-led by Zheng-Yi Chen at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School and by collaborators at Fudan University’s Eye & ENT Hospital, treated six children aged 1 to 7 who were suffering from an inherited mutation of the OTOF gene, which manufactures a protein important in transmitting signals from the ear to the brain.
Five of…
