This open access paper provides a good summary of present thought on the contributing causes of hearing loss, in which the various issues of noise, aging, and toxicity cause harm via inducing stress in hair cells of the inner ear and their axonal connections to the brain. Autophagy is a cell maintenance process, the recycling of damaged component parts. More efficient autophagy helps hair cells to resist and survive a stressful environments, but autophagy declines with age. Defects arise in many of the component parts of the autophagic system and its regulation. This is likely why the threshold for loss of hair cells in response to stresses diminishes in later life, l…
Autophagy is Protective in the Progression Towards Age-Related Hearing Loss
This open access paper provides a good summary of present thought on the contributing causes of hearing loss, in which the various issues of noise, aging, and toxicity cause harm via inducing stress in hair cells of the inner ear and their axonal connections to the brain. Autophagy is a cell maintenance process, the recycling of damaged component parts. More efficient autophagy helps hair cells to resist and survive a stressful environments, but autophagy declines with age. Defects arise in many of the component parts of the autophagic system and its regulation. This is likely why the threshold for loss of hair cells in response to stresses diminishes in later life, l…