Hearing loss is one of the most common sensory deficits, affecting more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. The main causes of hearing loss are congenital or early childhood hearing loss, chronic middle ear infections, noise-induced hearing loss, age-related hearing loss, and ototoxic drugs that damage the inner ear. There are three main types of hearing loss: conductive hearing loss, sensorineural hearing loss, and mixed hearing loss. Over the years, genetic variants in more than 200 genes have been discovered that contribute to clinically heterogeneous forms of hearing loss, enabling genetic testing and genetic counseling.
The aim of this study was to define the genetic cause of hearing loss in families with multiple members with hearing loss, where previously used genetic approaches have not been successful. We will use whole genome sequencing, which will allow the analysis of all genomic regions and determination of all types of genetic changes, including copy number variations. We will use Sanger sequencing or MLPA as a confirmatory method.
Fifteen subjects with a clinical diagnosis of hearing loss were enrolled in this study. Of these, eight subjects are male and seven are female. The subjects come from 15 different families and have an average age of 19 years. Next-generation sequencing identified 9 different genetic variants in the genes AIFM1, COL4A3, GATA3, MYH14, PEX6, OTOA, OTOG and TECTA in six of the people included in the study. Among them, we identified six genetic variants that had not been previously described in the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD). One of the subjects was found to have a large deletion in the EYA4 gene after next-generation sequencing. Six genetic variants were confirmed by Sanger sequencing. The presence of a deletion in the EYA4 gene was excluded by the confirmatory method.
The next-generation sequencing approach to genetic diagnostics of congenital hearing loss allows rapid and reliable identification of causal genetic variants in many genes simultaneously, as the proportion of subjects studied here with identified causal variants in genes was comparable to that reported in the literature.
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