Active Research

Principal Investigators: Dennis Trune, Ph.D., Steven Hefeneider, Ph.D.

Objective: To identify how middle ear inflammatory processes cause cochlear dysfunction.

Background: Significant chronic and acute otitis media occurs in adults and can lead to permanent sensorineural hearing loss, irreversible inner ear pathology, persistent conductive hearing loss, cholesteatoma, meningitis, and impaired speech and language development. The inflammatory basis for inner ear damage and sensorineural hearing loss associated with otitis media is predominantly the transport of inflammatory mediators through the round window. The PI, in collaboration with colleagues, has recently developed an acute otitis media mouse model, as well as described chronic otitis media in the C3H/HeJ mouse that has a defect in its toll-like receptor 4. Furthermore, these collaborations have led to the development of new methods to characterize both middle and inner ear cytokine expression, NF-kB-mediated inflammatory processes, nitric oxide-mediated cochlear damage, and quantitative immune cell pathology. The proposed studies will capitalize on both these acute and chronic middle ear disease mouse models to establish the correlative middle and inner ear immune-mediated processes and will describe the molecular immune mechanisms by which otitis media can directly cause inner ear pathology.

Findings: Results may advance our understanding of inner ear inflammatory processes elicited by both acute and chronic otitis media and could lead to the development of new procedures for the detection and therapy of such hearing loss.