Below is a transcript of our conversation with Dr. Dawn Nelson: David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder that leads to several complications. Dr. Dawn Nelson, a faculty member in CMU's Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, was at a conference where she asked attendees, how many experienced hearing loss, and, how many experienced dizziness? Both questions were answered yes by more than half of those in attendance. Dr. Nelson began research asking if there is a correlation between these conditions, both related to the inner ear. Her research is ongoing, but I had the chance to learn about what she has learned so far…
Dr. Dawn Nelson:
Anything that would deteriorate. Any part of the body that would deteriorate due to lack of blood supply, so as it goes with hearing, you've got very small vessels that supply blood to the auditory system. So, if you've got a lack of blood supply to the auditory system, you can become permanently, you can have permanent hearing loss in thirty seconds to a minute. Because it connected with what I do for a living and I had no idea that dizziness was related to sickle cell disease. In fact, no one had any idea and the…we were the first people to really talk about that and (and, and) actually report on it and publish on it in a systemized way.
DN:
Was that then, that triggered an immediate set of (of) questions, then that you felt you wanted to explore, or how did you then get on the official road to working on this in a research base?
DrDN:
That's a really good question. People became interested and one gentleman in particular, he came, he went to the (the) organizer of that FDA conference and asked her to get in touch with me. So, she got in touch with me and said, hey, there's this man asking for you to, you know, what has happened to that person who is interested in dizziness and hearing loss and you know, I'm always looking for research projects for students and things like that. And so, the first thing that I thought to do was just to figure out how many people actually have dizziness. And the reason I say that, and I know the article is about falls is because there's a definite tie between dizziness and falling, so people that have dizziness are about 5 or 6 times more likely to fall.
DN:
Are there other things that potentially come up as questions for you moving forward?
DrDN:
Well, right now I'm involved in several studies that are not only looking at does it affect people? We know that it (it, it) does. We know now that people that have sick adults that have sickle cell disease report about 70% report that they have dizziness and about 33% report that they fall. That's more than the average U.S. citizen. And more than people over 65 years old, and we didn't know that before. So now I'm involved in research that is trying to look at now that we know that they have those symptoms when we actually test them and evaluate their, the physiology of their balance system and their likelihood to fall. Does that correlate? So, I'm doing that research now with a group in Baltimore and with a group in Ann Arbor.
DN:
This can then go to anyone that has any form of sickle cell?
DrDN:
The answer to your question is we don't really know because we're still looking at it. So, there's looking at actually the part of the skull that houses the auditory system and to determine exactly what kind of damage we have theories about what causes the damage from just kind of anecdotal, whether or not the bones are ossified. And whether there's crystallization in there or do we lose hair cells and nerve cells in there, we, we, we can hypothesize about that. But to begin to actually take apart, do an autopsy, let's say on a cadaver of a person with sickle cell disease, and to figure out what exactly that damage is. If they had had hearing loss or dizziness. Those have never been done. In fact, we don't even have temporal bones which house the auditory vestibular system to actually look at that. So one of the things I'm thinking about doing in the near future is to try to start another sickle cell drive that we that we could harvest and it wouldn't be right now, of course, because people have to live their whole lives and then pass away, but, the (the) temporal bones that we do have are from the 60s and from the 70s and we're just beginning to look at that and I am involved in that kind of research with those people doing that, those kind of studies.
DN:
Doctor Dawn Nelson, professor of Audiology at Central Michigan University, thank you for sharing this information and (and) story with us, and we very much appreciate the time.
