This technology is a pharmaceutical composition that uses calcium citrate tetrahydrate as an active ingredient to prevent and treat ototoxic hearing loss caused by the use of the aminoglycoside antibiotic gentamicin. It also includes a health functional food composition for preventing and improving hearing loss, and a research reagent composition for inhibiting gentamicin-induced hair cell damage using the same ingredient.
While gentamicin has been widely used for a long time due to its effectiveness against Staphylococcus, E. coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, continuous exposure to cochlear cells causes hair cells in the organ of Corti to die due to reactive oxygen species, leading to permanent hearing loss. Most protective drugs currently in clinical trials are strong nucleophiles that block reactive oxygen species, but they form complexes with antibiotics, reducing their antibacterial efficacy, and their non-specific action results in minimal protective effects.
Based on the finding that treating gentamicin-damaged hair cells with calcium citrate tetrahydrate increases the number of normal hair cells, this technology uses a safe inorganic salt in the form of a calcium-citrate hydrate as a hearing protection agent. It can be applied as a co-administered hearing protection agent for patients receiving intravenous gentamicin, a calcium-supplementing health functional food for patients on long-term antibiotic therapy, and a hair cell protection reagent for ototoxicity mechanism research. This offers a way to reduce auditory side effects without discontinuing antibiotic treatment, using an ingredient already familiar as a calcium supplement.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Knowledge-Convergence Network-Based Design Platform for Accelerating the Synthesis and Evaluation of Hybrid Nanocomposites.
N/A
