Viagra and other impotence drugs' usage may result in sudden hearing loss. It is not clear that the drugs truly trigger hearing loss, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided Thursday to add a warning about the possible risk after counting 29 reports of the problem since 1996 among users of this family of medicines.

In a breakthrough that will likely accelerate research aimed at cures for hearing loss, tinnitus, and balance problems, scientists have perfected a laboratory culturing technique that provides a reliable new source of cells critical to understanding certain inner-ear disorders.

A Purdue University researcher is working on a new technique to diagnose hearing loss in a way that more accurately reflects real-world situations.

Mild to moderate forms of hearing loss can have a lasting impact on the auditory cortex, according to findings by researchers at New York University’s Center for Neural Science. The study, which is the first to show central effects of mild hearing loss, appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Prof. Karen Avraham, chair of the department of human molecular genetics and biochemistry at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine, represented EuroHear, a consortium of 25 European, Israeli and U.K.-based research teams, at the European Union conference “Hearing and Seeing: European Research to Fight Deafness and Blindness,” held at Paris’s College de France on July 2-3, 2007.

Patients with the genetic disorder von Hippel-Lindau disease may suddenly experience hearing loss because of a tumor-associated hemorrhage in the inner ear, according to a study in the July 4 issue of JAMA.

A gene responsible for the single most common cause of hearing loss among white adults, otosclerosis, has been identified for the first time, a scientist told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in Nice, France. Ms Melissa Thys, from the Department of Medical Genetics, University of Antwerp, Belgium, said that this finding may be a step towards new treatments for otosclerosis, which affects approximately 1 in 250 people.

Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System have discovered a way to transfer genes, which they hope will restore hearing, into diseased tissue of the human inner ear. This important step brings scientists closer to curing genetic or acquired hearing loss. Their discovery will appear Thursday, June 14, in the online issue of the scientific journal, Gene Therapy.

Clinical research conducted in the Department of Communication Disorders at the University of Haifa revealed that some children who are born deaf "recover" from their deafness and do not require surgical intervention. To date, most babies who are born deaf are referred for a cochlear implant. "Many parents will say to me: 'My child hears; if I call him, he responds'.

Soldiers exposed to the deafening din of battle have little defense against hearing loss, and are often reluctant to wear protective gear like ear plugs that could make them less able to react to danger. But what if a nutritious daily "candy bar" could prevent much of that potential damage to their hearing?