![]() Kayana Szymczak for STATįew doctors or audiologists are even aware of the condition, though the new findings may encourage them to take patients who complain of ear pain more seriously. “It is time for pain hyperacusis to be recognized as a real symptom, not as a psychosomatic phenomenon,” García-Añoveros said. ![]() Maholchic’s collection of noise reduction earmuffs. There’s no firm estimate of how many people may suffer from noise injury. Individual susceptibility to noise exposure varies greatly, and may be genetic. “Young people don’t report a rock concert as a painful experience,” said Paul Fuchs, a professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, whose research was published in the journal PNAS in November. Indeed, noise can cause damage even if it doesn’t feel uncomfortably loud in the moment. Noise loud enough to cause immediate pain - like a gunshot or a firecracker going off at close range - is so rare that few people ever experience it, except those in the military.īut exposure over time to more modest noise - from music, movies, sirens, lawnmowers, and a thousand other everyday things - can damage hearing and set off the pain fibers. In some people, these fibers seem to switch on - and never switch off. That research, coauthored by Liberman, was published last March in Current Biology.Īt around the same time, a lab at Johns Hopkins University found that when certain sensory cells of the cochlea are damaged, as might occur during very loud noise, they release a chemical that activates the mysterious pain fibers. It took 15 years, but using several strains of deaf mice, Jaime García-Añoveros, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, found that intense noise causes activity in these fibers. These mystery fibers resemble pain fibers elsewhere in the body. Within the cochlea, one kind of nerve fiber has long puzzled scientists. It’s tough to reach and impossible to biopsy, thereby hampering experimental work. The problems start with the pea-sized cochlea, a tiny sensory organ buried within a skull bone. Charles Liberman, a professor of otology at Harvard Medical School and director of a hearing research lab at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. “What even most auditory scientists don’t understand about hyperacusis with pain is that the pain lingers long after the sound is gone, much as the pain from a flesh wound would,” said M. He says that he spends most of his time reading and painting. Maholchic often spends time in this room, so he can look outside the window and feel the sun, since he cannot tolerate going outside during the day. The sensation persists as a searing, burning ear pain, often combined with the pressure known as aural fullness and the ringing known as tinnitus. Patients’ descriptions of the pain are remarkably similar: A sound is usually perceived as the sharp jab of a knife or skewer. ![]() Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More ![]()
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