Stapediovestibular ankylosis in an HIV/HCV-copositive patient.

To the best of the author's knowledge, no case of a patient with stapediovestibular ankylosis who was also coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been previously described in the literature. This report describes the case of a 36-year-old woman who was diagnosed with all three conditions. The clinical diagnosis of stapes fixation was based on otoscopic, audiometric, tympanometric, and surgical findings.

Presenting HINT results graphically.

A special supplement of this journal examines the development and applications of the hearing in noise test (HINT). Currently there is no specific manner to plot HINT results, and the specialized software uses a threshold graph with norms or percentiles. We propose a modified radar plot to present HINT data.

Sofia profile plot: a new graphical approach to present the changes of hearing thresholds with time.

After pure-tone audiometry, we have several sequences of threshold values. Usually, a multiple-line plot is used to present and compare data between measurements by overlaying them in a single graph. Calculation of air-bone gap and pure-tone average is widely accepted as an approach to simplify statistical handling of these data.

Antimeasles immunoglobulin G and virus-neutralizing activity in sera of patients with otosclerosis.

Otosclerosis is considered as an organ-specific measles virus (MV)-induced disease. The majority of people are infected with MV during childhood, and the immune activation is characterized by a lifelong persistence. Any kind of depressed systemic antimeasles reaction can lead to induction of a local immune response in the inner ear.

Decreased measles virus-neutralizing activity in sera from otosclerotic patients.

Hypothesis: Any kind of depressed systemic anti-measles reaction can lead to the induction of a local immune response in the inner ear and possibly to reactivation of bone turnover in this region.

Methods: Different dilutions of sera were tested for neutralizing activity against a constant viral concentration. The ability of measles virus to infect and replicate in the cell monolayer was detected by enumeration of living and growing cells with a colored reaction.