the incidence of pre-lingual hearing loss (hl) is about 1 in 1000 neonates. more than 60% of cases are inherited. non-syndromic hl (nshl) is extremely heterogeneous: more than 130 loci have been identified so far. the most common form of nshl is the autosomal recessive form (arnshl). in this study, a cohort of 36 big arnshl pedigrees with 4 or more patients from 7 provinces of iran was investig...

(See the articles by Ogawa et al., on pages 782–8, and by Schleiss et al., on pages 789–98.) It has been 50 years since Smith [1] and Weller et al. [2] separately reported the isolation and propagation of a cytopath-ogenic virus from tissues of infants with cytomegalic inclusion disease. In the intervening half century, much has been learned about congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, as ...

The deafness locus DFNB1 contains GJB2, the gene encoding connexin26 and GJB6, encoding connexin30, which appear to be coordinately regulated in the inner ear. In this work, we investigated the expression and function of connexin26 and connexin30 from postnatal day 5 to adult age in double transgenic Cx26(Sox10Cre) mice, which we obtained by crossing connexin26 floxed mice with a deleter Sox10-...

BACKGROUND Mutations in GJB2, which encodes connexin 26 (Cx26), a cochlear gap junction protein, represent a major cause of pre-lingual, non-syndromic deafness. The degeneration of the organ of Corti observed in Cx26 mutant-associated deafness is thought to be a secondary pathology of hearing loss. Here we focused on abnormal development of the organ of Corti followed by degeneration including ...

BACKGROUND Thirty thousand infants are born every year with congenital hearing impairment in mainland China. Racial and regional factors are important in clinical diagnosis of genetic deafness. However, molecular etiology of hearing impairment in the Tibetan Chinese population living in the Tibetan Plateau has not been investigated. To provide appropriate genetic testing and counseling to Tibet...