Active clinical trials for "Deafness"

Hearing loss is one of the most common health concerns affecting 1 in 3 Americans over 60 years of age rising to 1 in 2 for those over 85 years old. Contributions to hearing abilities provided by cognitive and memory processes are universally recognized as essential to adequate speech communication, but these processes are not well understood. Cognitive limitations in the ability to rapidly process sequential sounds occur with all listeners but may have more impact on older Veterans with and without hearing impairment. The purpose of this study is to examine and more thoroughly characterize the change in auditory working memory with hearing loss and increasing age. Young and older listeners with and without hearing loss will listen and report on two target sounds embedded in a stream of rapidly occurring sound. The investigators expect that older listeners without hearing loss will have more difficulty than young listeners but that older listeners with hearing impairment will have the most difficulty with this task even when the sounds they are listening to are adjusted to compensate for their hearing loss.

The aim of the study is to assess the effect of antiviral therapy with pegylated interferon alpha for hepatitis C and B on auditory disability as there are reports in the English literature on auditory disability caused by interferon alpha.

The study will allow to identify the prevalence of the SLC17A8 gene mutations in patients suffering from deafness. This phenotype also corresponds to DFNA15 deafness caused by POU4F3 : mutations of this gene will be screened as well.

This studied is designed to discover the genes that cause hearing impairment. More precisely, this study aims to map and clone genes that are important for the development and maintenance of the anatomy and physiology related to hearing (auditory system). The study will begin by finding large families who have members with hearing impairment. Once families are found, members with and without hearing impairment will be evaluated by an audiologist and a clinician (doctor). An audiologist, is a person trained in evaluating, habilitating, and rehabilitating people with disorders of hearing function. The clinician's responsibility is to examine the patients and check for other signs and symptoms related to hearing. Finding the gene for hearing impairment requires: <TAB>DNA samples of hearing impaired family members, taken from standard blood samples. <TAB>DNA samples of members of the family without hearing impairment, taken from standard blood samples. <TAB>Results of hearing tests conducted by the audiologist for all participants. Once all members of the family are evaluated researchers can create a pedigree. A pedigree is like a family tree that charts members of a family with a genetic disorder, like hearing impairment. Pedigrees are used to determine the mode of inheritance of the gene responsible for a particular condition. Finally, researcher intend on using all the information gathered as well as methods for genetic analysis to map out the location of the gene. Patients participating in this study will not directly benefit from its research, but scientific understanding achieved may help researchers better understand the auditory system and someday prevent deafness.<TAB>...

Neck pain is a common complaint in the general population affecting 10-15% of the general population. females more than men. Known risk factors are: Trauma, Repetitive lifting of heavy objects at work, driving vibrating vehicles, frequents diving from boards and smoking. No study dealt with the possible role of unilateral loss of vision or hearing as a risk factor for the development of neck pain. Intuitively, one might suspect that unilateral blindness or deafness will lead to a tilted position of the head, in order to cover a better visual/audio field. This position, in time, might lead to the development of neck pain. Our hypothesis is that patients with unilateral blindness/deafness will suffer from neck pain more frequently than the general population.

International, multicenter, observational, longitudinal monitoring study to identify biomarker/s for Alport syndrome and to explore the clinical robustness, specificity, and long-term variability of these biomarker/s

In this study, investigators will examine how temporal rate processing might be affected when the width of neural excitation narrows. The manipulation of neural excitation width will be achieved for example by changing electrode configurations or stimulating single versus multiple electrodes simultaneously. Investigators will then measure if the extent to which rate processing is affected by spatially restricted stimulation can predict a subject's overall speech recognition and predict also whether the subject is likely to benefit from a focused electrode configuration. Lastly, investigators will introduce and test a novel current focusing strategy where current focusing is applied in a channel specific manner and quantify if this intervention improves speech recognition. The primary endpoint of the study is speech recognition, and the secondary endpoint is psychophysical sensitivity to stimulation rate change.

International, multicenter, observational, longitudinal monitoring study to investigate the prevalence of Alpha-Mannosidosis in participants at risk for Alpha-Mannosidosis.

In this study, the investigators will study one of the basic biophysical properties of the auditory nerve, charge integration, behaviorally (detection threshold versus phase duration functions). The investigators will compare charge integration in two subject groups: congenitally deafened and deafened at a later age in life. The investigators will then examine if behaviorally estimated neural excitation patterns differ between short phase duration and long phase duration stimulation. Lastly, The investigators will measure if speech recognition improves with using long phase duration stimulation, relative to using the standard default short phase duration stimulation. The primary endpoint of the study is speech recognition, and the secondary endpoints are the steepness of the detection threshold versus phase duration functions, and the width of psychophysically estimated neural excitation.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the safety and preliminary efficacy of implanting a cochlear implant (CI) in the profoundly deaf ear of an adult with one normal hearing (NH) ear (termed "single-sided deaf" person, or SSD). The potential subjects will have been deafened post-lingually, thus, at one point the now deafened ear did conduct sound from the periphery. The MED-EL CI system will be implanted in ten (10) SSD patients.The long-term goal of this research program is to determine whether the CI, in combination with the NH ear, may provide improved localization ability and better speech understanding in noise, relative to performance before cochlear implantation (i.e., with the NH ear alone). A secondary long-term goal is to determine whether CI stimulation may reduce tinnitus severity, compared to tinnitus experienced prior to cochlear implantation or when the CI is turned off, after implantation.