http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7003
10:35 14 February 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan

A pioneering form of gene therapy has apparently cured deafness in guinea
pigs, raising hopes that the same procedure might work in people.
"It's the first time anyone has biologically repaired the hearing of
animals," says Yehoash Raphael at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and head of the US-Japanese team that developed the technique.

The therapy promotes the regrowth of crucial hair cells in the cochlea, the
part of the inner ear which registers sound. After treatment, the
researchers used sensory electrodes around the animals' heads to show that
the auditory nerves of treated - but not untreated - animals were now
registering sound.