Dr. Yilai Shu examines a young patient at the Eye & ENT Hospital of Fudan University in China. Mass General Brigham hide caption toggle caption Mass General Brigham An experimental gene therapy appears safe and highly effective for restoring hearing to people born with a rare form of deafness, researchers reported Wednesday. The study, the largest and longest to date to evaluate a gene therapy for hearing loss, provides powerful new evidence that the approach may provide the first way to restore hearing to people who are deaf. "The results are really remarkable," Zheng-Yi Chen , an associate scientist at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston who led the study, published in the journal Nature . "This is really for the first time in the whole field a brand-new treatment option for genetic hearing loss.…