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Saudi Arabian doctors need to be more aware of consensus guidelines for managing patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and their role in the variability of care for these children, a study says. The study, “Effect of new modalities of treatment on physicians management plan for patients with spinal muscular…

Patients with spinal-bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) are more likely to be affected by metabolic disorders, including insulin resistance and fatty liver disease, which can lead to heart disease and serious liver damage, a study says. The study, “Prevalence of metabolic syndrome and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in…

Leuprorelin acetate may be a promising therapy to minimize swallowing dysfunction in patients with spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), a study finds. The study, “Efficacy and safety of leuprorelin acetate for subjects with spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy: pooled analyses of two randomized-controlled trials,” was published in the…

Madeline Collin, a 24-year-old activist with Gaucher disease, worries that patients like her will suffer deeply if Britain leaves the European Union (EU), as scheduled, at the end of this month. Collin is an expert on the subject. For her University of Bathdissertation, she analyzed Brexit’s long-term impact…

Treatment with Spinraza (nusinersen) was able to resolve many severe and widespread skin lesions in a 7-month-old infant with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1, a case report shows. Although this is just…

With each new advance in medicine comes ethical dilemmas, from fertility treatments and newborn screening, to vaccinations, gene therapies and euthanasia. But rare diseases and the expensive therapies needed to treat them — particularly in an age of scarce economic resources — almost always entail “tragic choices,” warned Avraham Steinberg,…

Positive interim data from an ongoing Phase 1 trial in healthy volunteers supports the continued development of Scholar Rock’s investigational candidate SRK-015 as a treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The company is now planning to launch a Phase 2 trial to assess the safety and efficacy…

While the Canadian Association of Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) recommended that the spinal muscular atrophy treatment Spinraza should be made available to a broader population of patients, it said public funding should not cover patients older than 12 — a determination that the treatment’s developer Biogen called…

A drug appraisal committee of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) met in Manchester, England, for the third and final time March 6 to decide whether to recommend Spinraza (nusinersen) for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Several hundred demonstrators organized by the nonprofit group…

Rare diseases affect about 30 million Americans — roughly the same number as those with type 2 diabetes. Yet only 5 percent of the estimated 7,000 rare diseases known to science have cures or treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Raising awareness of those illnesses and highlighting…