Larry Luxner,  —

In an unprecedented decision reached Sept. 26 on the eve of Rosh Hashana — the Jewish New Year — Israel’s top health insurer, Clalit, said it would cover the $4.25 million cost of one-time Zolgensma gene therapy for two Israeli babies born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

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…

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…

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,…

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…

A new international consortium based in Paris, and funded largely by the 28-member European Union, intends to speed the diagnosis of rare diseases, while also accelerating the development of treatments for the 95% of such illnesses that currently don’t have one. The European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP…

A violinist with vasculitis, two Texas politicians and a pharmaceutical company whose marijuana-derived therapy helps kids with Dravet syndrome were among winners of the 2019 Rare Impact Awards. Officials of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) presented the awards during a June 22 dinner attended by…

Now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given its blessing to the AveXis gene therapy Zolgensma for children up to 2 years old with spinal muscular atrophy, the company hopes to win similar approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) later this year. AveXis,…

[Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of articles on Zolgensma and treatments for SMA, the issues they raise, and possible discoveries to come, all drawn from recent interviews with neurologists and researchers involved in this work. Others in this series can be found here. SMA News…

Michael Noon, 42, says the thing he hates most about spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is having to constantly ask other people for assistance. “I’m keenly aware of the physical help I need, and as I’ve gotten weaker over the years, that’s always been my internal struggle,” he said. “You…