Title: "Mapping the Hearing Phenome: From Comorbidity to Causality"

Speaker: Ishan Bhatt, PhD, CCC-A

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have reshaped biomedical research by enabling large-scale, data-driven discovery of genetic influences on complex traits. The integration of genomic data with electronic health records in large population biobanks has extended this framework to phenome-wide investigation, allowing systematic evaluation of how a condition relates across hundreds of medical traits. Recent advances in GWAS-based causal modeling represent a major methodological innovation, enabling distinction between correlation and causality across complex traits. This presentation reviews the theoretical foundations of phenome-wide association analysis and causal modeling and then presents a multi-layered investigation of age-related hearing loss, speech-in-noise deficits, and tinnitus. Medical comorbidities are mapped across the phenome, shared genetic architecture is quantified, and causal modeling is applied to identify relationships consistent with causal contribution to hearing pathology. Together, this framework advances the hearing phenome from descriptive association toward actionable causal insight, strengthening the scientific foundation for precision medicine in auditory disorders.

Attendees are encouraged to join in person in HSAB 2004. Seating is limited (first-come, first-served, ~50 seats), but the seminar will also be available via Zoom.