unsaveSave
expand-left
full screen With the help of gene therapy, a British girl got her hearing back. Archive image. Photo: Gorm Kallestad/NTB/TT
With the help of a pioneering gene therapy treatment, a British girl who was born deaf can now hear. The girl has also started to talk, writes the BBC.
Opal Sandy, as the girl is called, underwent the gene therapy just before her first birthday and her parents tell the BBC that the results have been amazing – even though the treatment was extremely tough.
– It was really scary, but this was a unique opportunity, says the mother.
Six months after the treatment – which, in short, involves replacing the faulty DNA that caused the deafness – Opal has almost normal hearing, her doctor says, and she can even hear so-called soft sounds like whispers. In addition, she can say words like “mother” and “father”.
Opal received the gene therapy treatment on the right ear and a cochlear implant on the left.
The little girl is part of a study recruiting patients in the UK, US and Spain. Gene therapy treatments are also being researched in other countries. In January, it was reported that five deaf children regained hearing via gene therapy in China, in a study that has been ongoing since 2022.