The human ear can be considered as a complex and marvelous piece of craftsmanship. Many types of contagious diseases, injury, exposure to loud noise or tumor cause deafness. Apart from these causes, genetic disorder is the frequent cause of childhood, impairment of hearing.

One of the parents or both is the contributor for genetic hearing loss. If the diagnosed disorder is present in the family members, the doctor would try to remove the cause through necessary tests. Very often the child can suffer from genetic loss of hearing totally obvious of previously affected family members.

Inheritance Without Fuss

If a dominant gene carries a disorder causing genetic hearing loss, it will spread to every family member who carries the gene. it is enough if a parent, having the disorder, purses it. If a recessive gone carries the disorder causing genetic hearing loss, both the parents have to carry it and pass it to a child.

If the child gets the single parent gene, it carries the gene and passes it on to its own children. The child itself will not develop the disorder. Genetic hearing loss is caused by two kinds of disorders. Syndromic disorder not only brings in genetic hearing loss but a bund of other health problems.

The syndromic type of genetic hearing loss is determined by test for one of the other health problems. Kidney problems are caused by Alport syndrome. Progressive blindness is the result Usher syndrome while Waardenburg syndrome causes skin pigment changes. All these syndromes are responsible for some degree of genetic hearing loss.

It is found that most genetic hearing loss is non syndromic. Hearing loss is the only evident health problem. Specialist doctors should find out if it is a part of syndrome so that they may give timely treatment to other developing problems. Many times a genetic hearing loss can be helped with genetic testing.

In case of hearing loss without other symptoms and a few family members with the same disorder, genetic testing can be done. This will inform whether the hearing loss will become worse overtime. It also assists us in deciding whether a cochlear implant would help and assist the patient in making future reproductive choices. Information about genetic hearing loss can lead to successful gene therapy as and when it is available.

[tags]Gene, Genetic Hearing Loss[/tags]