Pharmacological approaches to the prevention and treatment of cochlear injury due to noise

Abstract

Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) due to the damaging effects of noise is the second leading cause of SNHL, next to presbyacusis, in the industrialized world. It is the leading cause of preventable SNHL despite the implementation of hearing conservation programs after World War II. While engineering solutions and personal hearing protection devices remain important approaches to preventing noise-induced hearing loss, they have inherent limitations. Therefore researchers from a number of laboratories worldwide have devoted much time in the last decade to elucidating the cellular and molecular mechanisms of cochlear injury due to noise. This has led to the documentation of a number of therapeutic compounds that attenuate noise damage to hearing based on known mechanisms of injury. Some of these effects are quite robust. Clinical studies are beginning to emerge.