A gene therapy delivered via a single injection into the inner ear has been shown to improve hearing in people with a rare form of genetic deafness.
The study, led by researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and collaborators in China, involved ten patients aged between one and 24 years with hearing loss caused by mutations in the OTOF gene.
Participants received a single dose of gene therapy using an adeno-associated virus vector to deliver a functional copy of the OTOF gene directly into the cochlea.
All ten patients showed improvements in hearing following treatment.
The findings were published in Nature Medicine.
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