BACKGROUND Treatment of inner ear diseases remains a problem because of limited passage through the blood-inner ear barriers and lack of control with the delivery of treatment agents by intravenous or oral administration. As a minimally-invasive approach, intratympanic delivery of multifunctional nanoparticles (MFNPs) carrying genes or drugs to the inner ear is a future therapy for treating inn...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Adult size is achieved in the inner ear labyrinth by approximately 25 weeks' gestation, and minimal variability in age, sex, side, and race is found after birth. In this study, we opted to determine the reproducibility of inner ear volumetric measurements generated from high-resolution heavily T2-weighted 3D fast spin-echo MR images. METHODS The temporal bones of 23 vol...

In various patterns of sensorineural hearing loss including Ménière's disease, which may show improvement in auditory function following immunosuppressive therapy, an isolated autoimmune disease of the inner ear has been postulated. Because of the lack of well-defined diagnostic criteria to identify autoimmune processes within the inner ear and the fact that the human inner ear is one of the fe...

HYPOTHESIS Studies were designed to ascertain the impact of chronic middle ear infection on the numerous ion and water channels, transporters, and tissue remodeling genes in the inner and middle ear. BACKGROUND Permanent sensorineural hearing loss is a significant problem resulting from chronic middle ear disease, although the inner ear processes involved are poorly defined. Maintaining a bal...

Vertebrate hearing and balance are based in complex asymmetries of inner ear structure. Here, we identify retinoic acid (RA) as an extrinsic signal that acts directly on the ear rudiment to affect its compartmentalization along the anterior-posterior axis. A rostrocaudal wave of RA activity, generated by tissues surrounding the nascent ear, induces distinct responses from anterior and posterior...

Liposome nanocarriers (LPNs) are potentially the future of inner ear therapy due to their high drug loading capacity and efficient uptake in the inner ear after a minimally invasive intratympanic administration. However, information on the biocompatibility of LPNs in the inner ear is lacking. The aim of the present study is to document the biocompatibility of LPNs in the inner ear after intraty...

There are dozens of different myosin isozymes, though it's not clear why cells require such a diversity. These images of fluorescently-labelled hair cells from the inner ears of frog, guinea pig and mouse show the localization of actin (red at top left and bottom right) and of four different forms of myosin (green, except at bottom left, where myosin VI is labelled in red). Hair cells are the r...

In recent years, huge advances have taken place in understanding of inner ear pathophysiology causing sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus, and vertigo. Advances in understanding comprise biochemical and physiological research of stimulus perception and conduction, inner ear homeostasis, and hereditary diseases with underlying genetics. This review describes and tabulates the various causes of ...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Despite the advancement of concurrent chemoradiotherapy, inner ear symptoms such as hearing loss, tinnitus, or vertigo/dizziness are still experienced in irradiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) survivors. This study utilized an inner ear test battery to assess the causes and sequence of inner ear deficits in irradiated NPC survivors with a mean interval of 10 years after...

Five different pathways are often suggested as important for bone conducted (BC) sound: (1) sound pressure in the ear canal, (2) inertia of the middle ear ossicles, (3) inertia of the inner ear fluid, (4) compression of the inner ear space, and (5) pressure transmission from the skull interior. The relative importance of these pathways was investigated with an acoustic-impedance model of the in...