Soldiers sent to the battlefield often come home with permanent hearing loss due to damage by the boom of explosions.

A research study from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis brings hope of a hearing protection in medicinal form.

That's right, soldiers popping a pill before being sent to war to protect their sense of hearing.

In laboratory mice, two anti-epileptic drugs have been found to significantly prevent permanent hearing loss from exposure to loud noises.

The said study is led by Jianxin Bao, Ph.D., research associate professor of otolaryngology and head of the Central Institute for the Deaf's Presbycusis and Aging Laboratory.

Bao and colleagues found that if they exposed mice to loud sounds and then gave them trimethadione (Tridione®) or ethosuximide (Zarontin®) --anticonvulsive medications used to treat epilepsy -- they could prevent a significant amount of permanent hearing loss. When mice got the medications before noise exposure, only trimethadione, not ethosuximide, significantly reduced subsequent hearing loss.

Potential applications of this finding will not only benefit soldiers for wars but also hunters (whose hearing loss is ofteh on the side where they hold their gun) and pilots (who are especially prone to hearing loss because of the noise in airplane cabins).

Currently, no drug on the market can prevent or treat noise-induced hearing loss while an estimated 30 million people in the United States encounter hazardous levels of noise at work: in particular, jobs such as construction, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and the military.

In fact, I know somebody who permanently damaged his hearing after years of working around ship engine rooms.

This was just a laboratory animal study, a lot of steps away from regulatory and marketing approval.

Meanwhile, patients in the market wait.

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