ear

Cotton swabs send dozens of children to ERs each day, study says

But people continue to use a soft-tipped plastic or paper stick to dig out the wax from their ear canals -- and it's a problem.

Authors of a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics, conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital, warn that using cotton-tip applicators to clean the ear can be dangerous, especially in the hands of little ones.

Gene therapy: Deaf to hearing a whisper

They say restoring near-normal hearing in the animals paves the way for similar treatments for people "in the near future".

Studies, published in Nature Biotechnology, corrected errors that led to the sound-sensing hairs in the ear becoming defective.

The researchers used a synthetic virus to nip in and correct the defect.

"It's unprecedented, this is the first time we've seen this level of hearing restoration," said researcher Dr Jeffrey Holt, from Boston Children's Hospital.