{"doi":"10.1186/s12974-025-03416-4","title":"Early control of cochlear viral load limits cochlear inflammation and prevents virus-induced sensorineural hearing loss","abstract":"Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most common viral infection acquired in utero and a leading cause of neurodevelopmental abnormalities, including sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). In previous studies using a murine model of HCMV induced SNHL, hearing loss was correlated with virus-induced cochlear inflammation but not cochlear viral load. However, these previous findings were determined at the time of auditory testing, a time poiont well past critical periods of auditory development. In the current study, cochlear virus load early in auditory development could be correlated with the magnitude of virus-induced cochlear inflammation, cochlear histopathology and the development of hearing loss. Transcriptional profiling at early times after infection revealed dysregulation of multiple well described deafness-related genes (DRG). Treatment with antiviral antibodies early after infection decreased cochlear virus load, cochlear inflammation, cochlear histopathology, and normalized DRG expression arguing that virus-induced cochlear inflammation can result in pleiotropic effects on the developing auditory system. Finally, this model also demonstrated that sterilizing immunity was unnecessary for prevention of SNHL, thus providing a rationale for inteventions that could limit, but not completely prevent HCMV infection of the developing auditory system.","journal":"Journal of Neuroinflammation","year":2025,"id":538111,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9518,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":716244,"name":"Maria C. Seleme","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258540,"name":"Tatiana T. Marquez‐Lago","orcid":"0000-0003-3279-5592","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1034994,"name":"Jiung-Wen Chen","orcid":"0000-0003-2507-9934","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":902748,"name":"Michael Mach","orcid":"0000-0002-8457-5850","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":646056,"name":"William J. Britt","orcid":"0000-0002-6257-1541","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241630,"name":"Matthew D. Smith","orcid":"0000-0001-6614-569X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":91,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:52:16.891390Z","pmid":"40122833","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}