Next month’s annual conference of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) in Washington, D.C., couldn’t come at a better time, says Marshall Summar, MD, chairman of NORD’s board of directors. “The pace of discovery in rare diseases has gone from brisk to hypersonic,” Summar told Bionews Services, publisher…
People with Pompe disease symptoms who are not directly referred to expert centers for a diagnostic work-up tend to take much longer to be properly diagnosed with this rare genetic disorder, a study shows. Researchers say facilitating direct referral might help with early diagnosis of Pompe. The study,…
Natural genetic variations, or polymorphisms, in the ACE gene do not account for the large variability in disease course, or the response to enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) observed among children and adults with Pompe disease, a study suggests. More research is needed to identify the…
A new study reports the genetic and clinical characteristics of 113 U.S. children who have Pompe disease, the largest such group that has been uniformly assessed in this manner. In addition to revealing four previously unreported disease-causing mutations, the data may help researchers and clinicians better understand the associations between…
Rare diseases deeply affect not only the children who experience them, but also their healthy brothers and sisters, as their parents can attest. Two entries in November’s “Disorder: The Rare Disease Film Festival” will focus on what siblings go through, according to the San Francisco festival’s co-founder,…
Developing gene therapies for rare diseases is one thing. Creating gene-edited “designer babies” is quite another. German legal expert Timo Minssen outlined the potentially explosive ethical landmines surrounding such issues during a recent talk at the New York Genome Center. Minssen directs the Center for Advanced Studies in…
Pharmaceutical executives rarely make for a sympathetic Hollywood medical drama. But John Crowley did, and in the nearly 10 years since the release of “Extraordinary Measures” — a tearjerker starring Brendan Fraser as Crowley and Harrison Ford as short-tempered scientist Robert Stonehill — biotech has seen a huge transformation, both…
Imagine living your whole life with a painful disease so rare that only 25 others worldwide have what you have. And that you’re one of just six such people who’ve made it to adulthood. Neena Nizar doesn’t have to imagine. The 41-year-old English professor at Metro Community College in Elkhorn,…
Aging and vascular risk factors, not enzyme replacement therapy or the disease itself, may increase the risk of late-onset Pompe disease patients developing white matter lesions in the brain, a study suggests. The study, “White matter lesions in treated late onset Pompe disease are not different to matched controls,”…
Oklahoma suffers more tornadoes than any other state, has the highest per-capita rate of women in U.S. prisons, ranks second in the number of teen births per 100,000 teenage girls, and has the nation’s third-highest rate of uninsured residents — with 13.9% of all Oklahomans lacking health coverage. As if…
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