News

Adults with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) can now receive treatment with Spinraza (nusinersen) at three new sites in England. With the addition of these centers, there are now 11 National Health Service Foundation Trust sites across the country that offer the disease-modifying therapy developed by Biogen, according…

Full-scale recruitment for an AUD$20 million (about $13.9 million U.S.) nationwide study to screen for severe genetic conditions has begun in Australia. Following the results of a pilot program that tested 60 couples, the current study seeks to screen 10,000 volunteer couples for genetic variants that raise their risk of…

A better understanding of the needs of adults with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), best ensuring for their mental and social — as well as physical — well-being, is necessary to guide future research, care recommendations, and policy decisions, a review study states. Among its findings was strong support for treatments that…

Adopting image-guided techniques may help physicians lower the risks of complications associated with the administration of Spinraza (nusinersen) in patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a study has found. Physicians caring for these patients should be familiar with the different techniques and possible complications of treatment administration, researchers…

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic won’t have much of an impact on cash available for new biotech startups, it has begun to cause delays in the development of gene therapies to treat a variety of rare diseases. That’s the consensus of industry experts who spoke in a May 26 webinar…

Berberine, a plant-derived compound often used in Chinese medicine, is able to clear the toxic protein clumps found in neurodegenerative diseases such as spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia, an early study in motor neurons suggests. The study, “…

The frequency with which spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is found in newborns may be lower than previously thought, according to one-year data from an SMA screening program in the state of New York. Based on expected disease frequency, the program anticipated that 20 to 38 of the more than 225,000…

European authorities must step up efforts to screen babies for a multitude of genetic disorders, a panel of experts suggested during a May 14-15 online medical conference. The session was part of the 10th European Conference on Rare Diseases & Orphan Products (ECRD2020) — which was to have occurred…

Heart problems associated with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) may be caused partially by calcium dysregulation in heart muscle cells in the absence of the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein, a study suggests. These findings not only shed light on the underlying mechanisms of heart problems in SMA — which may…

Dara Riva always had a rule that her 10-year-old son could play video games only once a week. But then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and her perspective changed. Riva’s son, Maximilian, has cystic fibrosis (CF), making him particularly susceptible to COVID-19 and the complications that can arise from it.