Bhatt\u2019s collaborators on the project are co-investigator Jason Wilder<\/strong>, professor of human genetics and genomics, who will oversee the genetic analyses; co-investigator Jin Wang<\/strong>, associate professor of statistics, who will provide statistical expertise; and Raquel Dias, a senior staff scientist at the Scripps Research Institute, who will consult on bioinformatics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have much information on how genes influence this disease, so we\u2019re investigating genetic association to tinnitus,\u201d Bhatt said.<\/p>\n Doing so could influence three areas of future treatment:<\/p>\n To isolate any genetic link from other causes of the condition, the team will study healthy young adults with tinnitus. Bhatt\u2019s team is distributing screening questionnaires throughout the university to find 300 healthy subjects among the student population on NAU\u2019s Flagstaff campus. Study participants will be invited to Bhatt\u2019s Auditory Research Lab<\/a>, where the team will assess hearing health measures and collect saliva samples for DNA analysis.<\/p>\n Bhatt hypothesizes that acute tinnitus is predominantly caused by environmental factors, whereas chronic tinnitus (such as having bothersome tinnitus for less than a year) is predominantly influenced by genetic factors.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty of the population of healthy young adults is that they don\u2019t exhibit age-related confounding factors and tend to exhibit almost no tinnitus-related distress,\u201d Bhatt said. \u201cBy studying healthy young adults who are not exposed to the extremely traumatic environments that other adults\u2014such as factory workers, military personnel and musicians\u2014might have experienced, the project expects to control for the adverse effects of environmental and age-related confounding factors on tinnitus.\u201d<\/p>\n The study is already underway, and Bhatt expects the sample size will grow. The screening questionnaire is circulating, and the team will collect and analyze data until December 2021. A clinical doctoral student will soon join the study to collect the audiological data and oversee the logistics. Bhatt is certain this study is just the beginning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope to collect enough pilot data so we can ultimately conduct a large-scale genetic analysis and construct a clinically useful genetic risk profile for tinnitus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Students interested in participating in the study can contact Bhatt at Ishan.Bhatt@nau.edu.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
Choosing a healthy study group from NAU<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Study<\/strong> is just the beginning<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"NAU](\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/NAU_primary-281_3514-300x213.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n