A large proportion of age-related hearing loss is caused by loss or damage to outer hair cells in the organ of Corti. The organ of Corti is the mechanosensory transducing apparatus in the inner ear and is composed of inner hair cells, outer hair cells, and highly specialized supporting cells. The mechanisms that regulate differentiation of inner and outer hair cells are not known. Here we repor...

The majority of hearing loss is caused by the permanent loss of inner ear hair cells. The identification of drugs that modulate the susceptibility to hair cell loss or spur their regeneration is often hampered by the difficulties of assaying for such complex phenomena in mammalian models. The zebrafish has emerged as a powerful animal model for chemical screening in many contexts. Several chara...

Baldness Hair loss Trichodynia Dr. Alfredo Rebora, Department of Dermatology, University of Genoa, Viale Benedeno XV, I-16132 Genova (Italy) No symptoms have ever been reported to accompany the development of baldness. There are patients, however, who, while complaining of hair loss, claim that their hair has become painful. We describe such discomfort and we propose the term trichodynia for it...

BACKGROUND Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been suggested as a therapeutic intervention for female androgenetic alopecia. OBJECTIVE To perform a pilot study on the effect of PRP scalp injections in women with female androgenetic alopecia. MATERIALS AND METHODS This double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled study compared the effect of PRP with that of saline placebo as scalp injection. T...

AA: alopecia areata AU: alopecia universalis IL: interleukin SALT: Severity of Alopecia Tool INTRODUCTION Alopecia areata (AA) is an autoimmune disease distinguished by the appearance of nonscarring hair loss. Initially characterized by oval or round patches of hair loss, the disease can progress to multiple clinical presentations, including the alopecia universalis (AU) subtype in which there ...

INTRODUCTION It has been shown that low levels of pigmentation increase susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss in humans. For this reason, white populations develop more pronounced noise- induced hearing loss in comparison to black populations. Similarly, blue-eyed individuals exhibit greater temporary threshold shift than brown-eyed subjects; still, no strong correlation has been verifie...

Baldness Hair loss Trichodynia Dr. Alfredo Rebora, Department of Dermatology, University of Genoa, Viale Benedeno XV, I-16132 Genova (Italy) No symptoms have ever been reported to accompany the development of baldness. There are patients, however, who, while complaining of hair loss, claim that their hair has become painful. We describe such discomfort and we propose the term trichodynia for it...

Previous studies have reported that modification of histones alters aminoglycoside-induced hair cell death and hearing loss. In this study, we investigated three FDA-approved histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors (vorinostat/SAHA, belinostat, and panobinostat) as protectants against aminoglycoside-induced ototoxicity in murine cochlear explants and in vivo in both guinea pigs and CBA/J mice. In...

Sensory hair cells in the cochlea, like most neuronal populations that are postmitotic, terminally differentiated, and non-regenerating, depend on robust mechanisms of self-renewal for lifelong survival. We report that hair cell homeostasis requires a specific sub-branch of the DNA damage nucleotide excision repair pathway, termed transcription-coupled repair (TCR). Cockayne syndrome (CS), caus...

Loss of sensory hair cells in the inner ear results in two global health impairments: hearing loss and balance disorders. In humans and other mammals, auditory hair cells damage is permanent and causes irreversible hearing loss. By contrast, hair cells in non-mammalian vertebrates are able to regenerate, prompting studies into the epigenetic mechanisms and signaling pathways that regulate hair ...