OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS To compare changes in hearing in patients with SLC26A4 during early and late childhood. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective chart review. METHODS A total of 102 patients with biallelic SLC26A4 mutations visited the tertiary referral otolaryngology department between March 2005 and February 2015. Newborn hearing screening tests had been performed on 22 of these patients. We anal...

Discriminating between inherited and non-inherited sporadic hearing loss is challenging. Here, we attempted to delineate genetic inheritance in simplex cases of severe-to-profound congenital hearing loss in Korean children. Variations in SLC26A4 and GJB2 in 28 children with bilateral severe-to-profound non-syndromic hearing loss (NSHL) without familial history were analyzed using Sanger sequenc...

The frequency and distribution of genetic mutations that cause deafness differ significantly according to ethnic group and region. Zhejiang is a province in the southeast of China, with an exceptional racial composition of the population caused by mass migration in ancient China. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and spectrum of gap junction‑β2 (GJB2), solute ca...

Pendrin (SLC26A4) is a Na(+)-independent Cl(-)/HCO(3) (-) exchanger which is expressed in the apical membranes of type B and non-A, non-B intercalated cells within the distal convoluted tubule, the connecting tubule, and the cortical collecting duct. In those segments it mediates HCO(3) (-) secretion and chloride (Cl(-)) absorption. In mice, no renal abnormalities are observed under basal condi...

Deleterious mutations of SLC26A4 cause Pendred syndrome (PS), an autosomal recessive disorder comprising goitre and deafness with enlarged vestibular aqueducts (EVA), and nonsyndromic hearing loss (NSHL). However, the SLC26A4 hyperactivity was recently associated with the emergence of autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) and asthma among human and mouse model. Here, by direct sequencing, we inves...

The present study aimed to investigate the molecular etiology of nonsyndromic hearing impairment (HI) in hearing impaired populations of Hui, Tibetan, and Tu ethnicities in northwest China. A total of 283 unrelated subjects with HI who attended special education schools in northwest China were enrolled in the present study. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in three common deafness‑related...

Sensorineural non-syndromic hearing loss is the most common disorder which affects 1 in 500 newborns. Hearing loss is an extremely heterogeneous defect with more than 100 loci identified to date. According to the studies, mutations in GJB2 are estimated to be involved in 50- 80% of autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss cases, but contribution of other loci in this disorder is yet ambig...