Clinical and experimental studies of autoimmune inner ear disease.

Otolaryngologists have long sought to identify causes of sensorineural hearing loss that could be reversed by medical treatment. An increasing amount of clinical and experimental evidence indicates that this postulated entity is related to autoimmune inner ear disease. Because of the lack of well-defined detection methods for identifying autoimmune processes within the human inner ear and the fact that it is one of the few organs of the body not amenable to diagnostic biopsy there has been great interest in developing animal models that mimic clinical entities. Different models will be presented in this paper. The results of these studies should provide sufficient evidence to establish a clear position in mainstream immunology for the entity of autoimmune inner ear disease.