Drug shows promise with hearing loss

Author: Nexstar Broadcasting

Published On: 09/16/2016

Neurofibromatoses are a group of disorders that cause tumors to grow in the nervous system. One of those conditions, NF 2, causes many patients to go deaf because the tumors grow on the nerves responsible for hearing. A drug already in use for some cancers is not only halting the hearing loss in some patients, but reversing it.

Heather Sheeley-Johns can walk along a busy city street without worry. For years, cars, horns and sirens were impossible to hear.

“I think things were a little more muffled. Having a very difficult time figuring out where the sound was coming from,” Sheeley-Johns said.

Sheeley-Johns was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis 2 in her late twenties. Tumors on one cranial nerve caused her hearing to get progressively worse.

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