{"id":8942,"date":"2020-09-25T21:42:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T19:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/?page_id=8942"},"modified":"2020-09-25T21:48:24","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T19:48:24","slug":"higenes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/higenes\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing Impairment Genetics Studies in Africa (HI-GeneS Africa)"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row css_animation=”fadeInDown”][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”none” css=”.vc_custom_1590657817569{margin-top: 36px !important;}”]\n
H3Africa Collaborative Research Center<\/em><\/a><\/h6>\n

Hearing Impairment Genetics Studies in Africa (HI-GeneS Africa)<\/h1>\n

The Goal: to better understand how genetics influence hearing impairment in African poplations to inform enchanced screening and treatment techniques.<\/h4>\n
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Project Lead<\/h3>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner]
\"ifgenera1\"<\/div><\/div>

Dr. Ambroise Wonkam<\/h4>

University of Cape Town<\/p>

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The Problem<\/h3>\nHearing impairment (HI) is the most disabling congenital anomaly, with particularly high prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa where up to 6 \/ 1000 children are born deaf. It is estimated that half of children that are born with HI is because of changes in their DNA. Despite major research progresses elsewhere, genetic causes of hearing impairment in people of African ancestry are largely unknown, making this research very important. Knowing these genes can help doctors to improve their capacity to detect HI early and offer appropriate treatment and counselling to affected people and families.\n

Project Strategy<\/h3>\n
    \n \t
  1. Enroll 125 families with early-onset non syndromic hearing impairment (or NSHI) from Cameroon, Mali, Ghana, and South Africa.<\/li>\n \t
  2. Generate next generation sequencing data on hearing-impaired family members.<\/li>\n \t
  3. Analyze sequence data to identiy novel NSHI genes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Potential Impact<\/h3>\nHI-GeneS Africa will have high public health significance, especially for minority populations. Identifying novel genes can help doctors to improve their capacity to detect HI early and offer appropriate treatment and counselling to affected people and families. The project will also improve genetic screening and in the future prediction of cochlear implant and treatment outcomes in sub-Saharan Africans, African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans of African descent.\n\n\n

    Project Sites<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n
    \n\n\n\nA: South Africa<\/strong>\nUniversity of Cape Town\n\nB: Cameroon<\/strong>\nUniversity of Yaounde I \/ Ministry of Public Health\n\nC: Ghana<\/strong>\nUniversity of Ghana\n\nD: Mali<\/strong>\nUniversity of Bamako\n\nNon-African Collaborators<\/strong>\nUSA:<\/strong> Baylor College of Medicine\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
    \n\n\n

    Funding<\/h3>\n
    This work is supported by the Wellcome Trust, African Academy of Sciences; and U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of the Director (OD), the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) grant number U01HG009716.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n

    Additional Resources<\/h3>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_btn title=”Project Publications (PubMed)” style=”custom” custom_background=”#c12000″ custom_text=”#ffffff” shape=”round” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fpubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2F%3Fterm%3DHG009716%255BGrant%2BNumber%255D|title:HI-GeneS%20PubMed%20Search|target:%20_blank|”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_btn title=”Scientific Description and Aims (NIH RePORT)” style=”custom” custom_background=”#c12000″ custom_text=”#ffffff” shape=”round” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fprojectreporter.nih.gov%2Fproject_info_description.cfm%3Faid%3D9955286%26icde%3D51877424%26ddparam%3D%26ddvalue%3D%26ddsub%3D%26cr%3D1%26csb%3Ddefault%26cs%3DASC%26pball%3D|title:HI-GeneS%20NIH%20RePORT|target:%20_blank|”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_btn title=”Download a PDF of this page” style=”custom” custom_background=”#c12000″ custom_text=”#ffffff” shape=”round” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fh3africa.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F09%2FHIGENES_H3ACommDoc-1.pdf|title:HI-GeneS%20Comm%20Doc|target:%20_blank|”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]\n

    Return to H3A Projects Page<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    HI-GENES Africa Project Summary\/Abstract Despite a large number of identified genes, only GJB2 and GJB6 have been systematically studied in sub-Saharan Africans, for which prevalence of NSHI-causal variants is close to zero and we estimate known NSHI genes only explain ~4.1% of autosomal recessive (AR) NSHI in African-Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[159],"class_list":["post-8942","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-projects","tag-aas-wellcome-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8949,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8942\/revisions\/8949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/h3africa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}