Gene therapy offers hope for children born deaf

A gene therapy that has allowed several children born deaf to hear for the first time is being hailed as a “game changer” that raises hopes of the first new treatment for hereditary deafness in decades.

Several medical teams around the world are trialling the procedure, which focuses on a rare genetic mutation that affects only a small number of the 26 million people with congenital deafness globally.

But several success stories announced last week are already being seen as a turning point.

On Tuesday, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia revealed that 11-year-old Aissam Dam, who was born deaf, was now “literally hearing sound for the first time in his life”.

Aissam still has mild-to-moderate hearing loss, and may never learn to talk because the brain’s window for acquiring speech closes around the age of five.

“A new era in he fight against all types of hearing loss

But a trial in China, the results of which were announced in The Lancet journal on Thursday, tested a similar treatment on six younger children.

Five gained the ability to hear, according to the findings of the trial that started in 2022, making it the first to have tested the gene therapy on humans.

Some of the children were already able to speak thanks to a cochlear implant – which they now no longer need, study coauthor Zheng-Yi Chen of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital told AFP.

But one, a baby only a year old, had never been able to communicate verbally, Chen said.

Chen said that after the treatment, when the mother asked the baby “who am I?”, the baby responded: “Mama.”

Not since cochlear implants were invented 60 years has there been such an advance, Chen said, adding that the therapy “symbolises a new era in the fight against all types of hearing loss”.