A Combined Genome Wide Association and Molecular Study of Age-Related Hearing Loss in Man

Sensorineural hearing loss is one of the most common sensory deficiencies. However, the molecular contribution to age-related hearing loss is not fully elucidated. We performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for hearing loss-related traits in the UK Biobank (N=362,396) and selected a high confidence set of ten hearing-associated gene products for staining in human cochlear samples: EYA4, LMX1A, PTK2/FAK, UBE3B, MMP2, SYNJ2, GRM5, TRIOBP, LMO-7 and NOX4. All proteins were found to expressed human in cochlear structures. Our findings illustrate cochlear structures that mediate mechano-transduction of auditory stimuli, neuronal conductance as well as neuronal plasticity are involved in age-related hearing loss. Further, these results suggest common genetic variation to influence structural resilience to damage as well as cochlear recovery after trauma, which protect against accumulated damage to cochlear structures and the development of hearing loss over time.