Vol.101 No.1 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 101 No. 1 January 2008
Clinical Trial of Local Drug Application into the
Inner Ear for Highly Hearing-Impaired Patients
Juichi Ito
(Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University)
There is no effective treatment for sensorinenral hearing disturbance. Inner ear sensory cells have been considered very fragile and functional recovery after damage is very difficult, making sensorinenral hearing loss very difficult to treat. Recently several drugs and chemicals have been reported to protect or promote recovery of inner ear function. However, applying those drugs to the inner ear is difficult because of specific anatomical and physiological factors. However, new technology using a drug delivery system (DDS) has introduced new possibilities. Especially, application of nerve growth factor in a biodegradable hydrogel is thought to be effective for protection and recovery of the inner ear function. We have reported the effectiveness of several drugs, especially nerve growth factors to prevent inner ear hair cell damage due to noise exposure or ototoxic chemicals in animals. We have begun a clinical trial using Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) for the treatment of sudden deafness.
Key words :clinical trial, DDS, biodegradable hydrogel, Insulin-like growth factor, sudden deafness