Fluvastatin protects cochleae from damage by high-level noise.

ABSTRACT: Exposure to noise and ototoxic drugs are responsible for much of the debilitating hearing loss experienced by about 350 million people worldwide. Beyond hearing aids and cochlear implants, there have been no other FDA approved drug interventions established in the clinic that would either protect or reverse the effects of hearing loss. Using Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABR) in a guinea pig model, we demonstrate that fluvastatin, an inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase, the rate-limiting enzyme of the mevalonate pathway, protects against loss of cochlear function initiated by high intensity noise. A novel synchrotron radiation based X-ray tomographic method that imaged soft tissues at micrometer resolution in unsectioned cochleae, allowed an efficient, qualitative evaluation of the three-dimens

SUBMITTER: Richter CP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5813011 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature