Michael Crompton, Tom Purnell, Hayley E Tyrer, Andrew Parker, Greg Ball, Rachel E Hardisty-Hughes, Richard Gale, Debbie Williams, Charlotte H Dean, Michelle M Simon, Ann-Marie Mallon, Sara Wells, Mahmood F Bhutta, Martin J Burton, Hilda Tateossian, Steve D M Brown
Otitis media (OM), inflammation of the middle ear (ME), is a common cause of conductive hearing impairment. Despite the importance of the disease, the aetiology of chronic and recurrent forms of middle ear inflammatory disease remains poorly understood. Studies of the human population suggest that there is a significant genetic component predisposing to the development of chronic OM, although the underlying genes are largely unknown. Using N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea mutagenesis we identified a recessive mouse mutant, edison, that spontaneously develops a conductive hearing loss due to chronic OM...
August 2017: PLoS Genetics