Autoantibodies to connective tissue in patients with auditory neuropathy / 中国耳鼻咽喉头颈外科

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE To study the causes and mechanism of auditory neuropathy. METHODS Auditory neuropathy is characterized by the DPOAE being normal, the shape of the pure tone loss being mostly in low frequencies, but the ABR being absent or the threshold elevated disproportionally to the pure tone threshold. Patients were screened from the deaf patients through asking the ill history and taking the exams of pure tone audiometry, auditory brain stem response, distortion product of otoaccoustic emissions (DPOAE). Thirty six patients were met the above standard. Deparaffined sections of cochlea of the guinea pigs were used as antigens to test whether the sera of patients had the autoantibodies with immunofluorescence method. RESULTS In the total of 36 patients with this type of hearing loss, autoantibodies were positive in 31 patients(86.1%). Twenty of the 31 patients had autoantibodiesto connective tissue of osseous spiral lamina where the nerve fiber connecting the hair cells and spiral ganglion cells go through. The autoantibodies to capsula surrounding the spiral ganglion and inner ear nerve fiber was also seen in these patients. In additional 7 patients, the autoantibodies to spiral ganglion cell nucleus and inner ear nerve fiber was detected. In the 44 control persons, 9.1% of them have the autoantibodies to inner ear tissues(P