Abstract

Background

Sensorineural hearing loss is one of the most common sensory deficiencies. However, the molecular contribution to age-related hearing loss is not fully elucidated.

Methods

We performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for hearing loss-related traits in the UK Biobank (N = 362,396) and selected a high confidence set of ten hearing-associated gene products for staining in human cochlear samples: EYA4, LMX1A, PTK2/FAK, UBE3B, MMP2, SYNJ2, GRM5, TRIOBP, LMO-7, and NOX4.

Results

All proteins were found to be expressed in human cochlear structures. Our findings illustrate cochlear structures that mediate mechano-electric transduction of auditory stimuli, neuronal conductance, and neuronal plasticity to be involved in age-related hearing loss.

Conclusions

Our results suggest common genetic variation to influence structural resilience to damage as well as cochlear recovery after trauma, which protect against accumulated damage to cochlear structures and the development of hearing loss over time.

Details

Title
A combined genome-wide association and molecular study of age-related hearing loss in H. sapiens
Author
Liu, Wei; Johansson, Åsa; Rask-Andersen, Helge; Rask-Andersen, Mathias  VIAFID ORCID Logo 
Pages
1-23
Section
Research article
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
17417015
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-021-02169-0
ProQuest document ID
2611257112
Copyright
© 2021. This work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.