Tinnitus and sensorineural hearing loss encompass conditions caused by over 200 genes, noise trauma, aging, and infections like herpes family viruses.

“It encompasses lots of different conditions. When it comes to hearing loss, there are already more than 200 genes identified to cause hearing loss, and that's the genetic component. But then there are environmental components to hearing loss, which include noise trauma that we talked about, aging, infection. Lots of different infectious diseases can cause hearing loss, not only viruses from the herpes family. Like herpes simplex virus, which causes a cold sore, or cytomegalovirus, which is the most common congenital infectious cause of hearing loss.”