The present study conclude that the elderly patients of 60 years of age or more with moderate sensorineural hearing loss could catch up their normal hearing peers in their communication skills within six months only if they prescribed and used proper hearing aids.

Background. Experimental studies have addressed the role of oxidant stress in the pathogenesis of Hemophilia A. This study aimed to determine whether dynamic thiol-disulfide exchange, a recently recognized cellular defense system against oxidative stress, is disturbed in children with hemophilia A. Methods. This prospective case control study included male children with hemophilia A (n=62) and randomly selected healthy age and sex-matched controls (n=62). Serum native thiol, total thiol and disulfide levels were analyzed with a novel spectrophotometric method. Ratios of disulfide/total thiol, disulfide/native thiol, and native/total thiol were calculated. Statistical comparisons were made using the independent samples t-test or the Mann-Whitney U test, according to whether the data were normally distributed or not. Results. Serum native thiol (385.0 ± 35.9 versus 418.0 ± 44.3, respectively; p < 0.001) and total thiol (424.2 ± 38.7 versus 458.0 ± 46.3, respectively; p > 0.001) levels were significantly lower in children with Hemophilia A compared to controls. Children with hemophilia A had significantly lower serum native thiol to total thiol ratio than controls (p=0.024). Serum disulfide levels of children with hemophilia A were close to controls (19.2 [17.6- 22.1] versus 19.8 [17.8- 21.2]), respectively; p=0.879) whereas disulfide to native thiol ratio (p=0.024) and disulfide to total thiol ratio (p=0.024) were significantly higher. Conclusions. Decreased antioxidant capacity with levels of serum native thiol and total thiol in children with hemophilia A might be regarded as evidence for the disturbance of thiol/disulfide balance. Antioxidant treatment can be a future target of therapy in children with hemophilia A.

OBJECTIVE:To analyze the cortical representations of auditory regularities and the relation between these representations and speech-in-noise (SIN) abilities and to compare two groups of participants with different SIN abilities on these cortical measures. MATERIALS and METHODS:In total, 22 participants aged 20-40 years with normal hearing and without noise exposure, brain stem level-processing issues, neurological/psychiatric issues, or related medication were presented with three different stimuli resembling auditory regularities appearing after random sounds as well as a random series of sounds. Participants received a total of 480 stimuli in passive and active phases each (in which they actively detected regularities). Evoked responses were recorded via 20-channel standard electroencephalography (EEG) cap. RESULTS:The groups were not significantly different in terms of evoked potential parameters. A significant negative correlation was observed between amplitudes of responses evoked by decreasing the frequency regularity in the active phase and SIN scores. Response parameters were significantly different between the stimuli. Active phase latencies were shorter and amplitudes were higher than passive phase ones, except for two stimuli. CONCLUSION:Cortical representations of decreasing frequency regularity are promising for revealing the link between SIN and representations of regularity detection. This paradigm is suggested to applicable to individuals with clinical-level SIN problems [hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implant (CI) users, normal-hearing individuals, children with learning problems, children with dyslexia, and others] to reveal which process of SIN mechanism is defective; this is a complicated process with many sub-mechanisms. These results may be utilized in designing CI and HA algorithms (for more robust representations of auditory regularities) and rehabilitation programs.

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