Older people may be given injections to improve hearing

Older people could be given injections to improve their hearing ‘within 10 years’ thanks to advances in gene science

• Hearing loss drugs step closer after discovery of 44 genes linked to condition
• By age of 65, third of people have some degree of hearing difficulty
• Hearing loss in old age is up to 55 per cent inherited, running in families 

Older people could one day be given injections to improve their hearing, according to an expert.

Drugs to fight age-related hearing loss are a step closer after scientists discovered 44 genes linked to the condition.

However, it could be ten years before the treatments are available.

By the age of 65, a third of people have some degree of hearing difficulty, which can lead to social isolation and has been linked to both depression and dementia.

Older people could one day be given injections to improve their hearing, according to an expert 

Hearing loss in old age is up to 55 per cent inherited, running in families, but only two of the genes behind it had previously been identified.

Now the largest genetic study of hearing loss in older age, including more than a quarter of a million people in the UK, has found 44. 

Of these, six had previously only been linked to hearing loss in babies, children and young people, and four had only been identified in animal studies.

Many of the genes are not thought to cause problems with the way that older ears work. 

Instead, they are likely linked to how the brain interprets sound – the ‘cocktail party effect’, which makes it hard for older people to hear conversation when there is background noise. 

Professor Frances Williams, who co-led the study from King’s College London, said: ‘Older people being given injections into their ears to switch genes in the cochlea [part of the inner ear] on or off is about ten years away, and there is the possibility gene editing could be used too.

Hearing loss in old age is up to 55 per cent inherited, running in families, but only two of the genes behind it had previously been identified

‘Hearing loss is increasing because of the ageing population, but hearing aids do not work well for many. Finding a better way to treat age-related hearing loss could transform lives.’

The study is based on more than 250,000 people aged 40 to 69 from the UK Biobank genetic database.

Researchers looked at the common genes of around 13,000 who had hearing aids, and around 87,000 who said they had difficulty hearing.

Their genes were compared with thousands from those without age-related hearing loss.

Dr Ralph Holme, of the charity Action on Hearing Loss, which funded the study – published in the American Journal of Human Genetics – said: ‘These findings are incredibly significant. 

We believe they will speed up the discovery of treatments to slow or even halt the progressive loss of hearing as we get older.’

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