Vitamin Supplement May Help Prevent Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

Certain vitamin supplements could help prevent noise-induced hearing loss, according to recent findings published in the journal Cell Metabolism. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Gladstone Institutes have found a way to prevent noise-induced hearing loss via a mouse that uses a simple chemical compound with a precursors to vitamin B3. Researchers believe the discovery could be particularly important as implications could in not just preventing hearing loss but also in treating some aging-related condition linked to the same protein.

"One of the major limitations in managing disorders of the inner ear, including hearing loss, is there are a very limited number of treatments options. This discovery identifies a unique pathway and a potential drug therapy to treat noise-induced hearing loss," said Kevin Brown, MD, PhD, an associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and first author on the paper, in a news release. 

The researchers chose NR because it is a precursor to the chemical compound nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which had previously been shown by Dr. Brown and co-senior author Samie Jaffrey, MD, PhD, to protect cochlea nerve cells from injury.

However, NAD+ is an unstable compound, calling into question whether it could be used out of the petri dish and in a live animal. That led the scientists to use NR instead.

Besides preventing hearing loss, they believe the results could broaden the ability of NR to protect certain nerve cells. Furthermore, scientists showed that NR and NAD+ prevent hearing loss by increasing the activity of the protein sirtuin 3 (SIRT3), which is critically involved in the function of mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell.

Researchers have hypothesized that the enhancement of SIRT3 may be behind the protective properties of NR that's manipulated SIRT3 levels independently to see if they could still prevent noise-induced hearing loss by administering NR. Deleting SIRT3 gene in mice abolished any of the protective properties of NR, while showing researchers that a new strain of mice were inherently resistant to noise-induced hearing loss even without administration of NR.

"The success of this study suggests that targeting SIRT3 using NR could be a viable target for treating all sorts of aging-related disorders--not only hearing loss but also metabolic syndromes like obesity, pulmonary hypertension, and even diabetes," researchers concluded.

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