Rare Diseases and Orphan Products


Book Description

Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.




Rare Diseases Epidemiology: Update and Overview


Book Description

The fields of rare diseases research and orphan products development continue to expand with more products in research and development status. In recent years, the role of the patient advocacy groups has evolved into a research partner with the academic research community and the bio-pharmaceutical industry. Unique approaches to research and development require epidemiological data not previously available to assist in protocol study design and patient recruitment for clinical trials required by regulatory agencies prior to approval for access by patents and practicing physicians.




Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs


Book Description

Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs shows that much of what we now know about common diseases has been achieved by studying rare diseases. It proposes that future advances in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of common diseases will come as a consequence of our accelerating progress in the field of rare diseases. Understanding the complex steps in the development of common diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic diseases, has proven a difficult problem. Rare diseases, however, are often caused by aberrations of a single gene. In rare diseases, we may study how specific genetic defects can trigger a series of events that lead to the expression of a particular disease. Often, the disease process manifested in a certain rare disease is strikingly similar to the disease process observed in a common disease. This work ties the lessons learned about rare diseases to our understanding of common ones. Chapters covering the number of common diseases are minimized, while rare diseases are introduced as single diseases or as members of diseases classes. After reading this book, readers will appreciate how further research into the rare diseases may lead to new methods for preventing, diagnosing, and treating all diseases, rare or common. - Makes rare diseases relevant to clinicians and researchers by tying lessons learned about the rare diseases to our understanding of the common diseases - Stresses basic pathologic mechanisms that account for human disease (e.g., disorders of cell development, replication, maintenance, function and structure), that can be understood without prior training in pathology - Discusses advanced concepts in molecular biology and genetics in a simple, functional context appropriate for medical trainees and new researchers - Offers insights into how further research into rare diseases may lead to new methods for preventing, diagnosing, and treating all diseases




Improving Diagnosis in Health Care


Book Description

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.







The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials


Book Description

Randomized clinical trials are the primary tool for evaluating new medical interventions. Randomization provides for a fair comparison between treatment and control groups, balancing out, on average, distributions of known and unknown factors among the participants. Unfortunately, these studies often lack a substantial percentage of data. This missing data reduces the benefit provided by the randomization and introduces potential biases in the comparison of the treatment groups. Missing data can arise for a variety of reasons, including the inability or unwillingness of participants to meet appointments for evaluation. And in some studies, some or all of data collection ceases when participants discontinue study treatment. Existing guidelines for the design and conduct of clinical trials, and the analysis of the resulting data, provide only limited advice on how to handle missing data. Thus, approaches to the analysis of data with an appreciable amount of missing values tend to be ad hoc and variable. The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials concludes that a more principled approach to design and analysis in the presence of missing data is both needed and possible. Such an approach needs to focus on two critical elements: (1) careful design and conduct to limit the amount and impact of missing data and (2) analysis that makes full use of information on all randomized participants and is based on careful attention to the assumptions about the nature of the missing data underlying estimates of treatment effects. In addition to the highest priority recommendations, the book offers more detailed recommendations on the conduct of clinical trials and techniques for analysis of trial data.




Rickettsial Diseases


Book Description

The only available reference to comprehensively discuss the common and unusual types of rickettsiosis in over twenty years, this book will offer the reader a full review on the bacteriology, transmission, and pathophysiology of these conditions. Written from experts in the field from Europe, USA, Africa, and Asia, specialists analyze specific patho







NORD Guide to Rare Disorders


Book Description

NORD Guide to Rare Disorders is a comprehensive, practical, authoritative guide to the diagnosis and management of more than 800 rare diseases. The diseases are discussed in a uniform, easy-to-follow format--a brief description, signs and symptoms, etiology, related disorders, epidemiology, standard treatment, investigational treatment, resources, and references.The book includes a complete directory of orphan drugs, a full-color atlas of visual diagnostic signs, and a Master Resource List of support groups and helpful organizations. An index of symptoms and key words offers physicians valuable assistance in finding the information they need quickly.




Rare Diseases Epidemiology


Book Description

In our etiologic research, we epidemiologists need to leave behind the concepts of ‘cohort’ study and ‘case–control’ study and adopt that of the etiologic study as the singular substitute for these. With this sentence, the famous epidemiologist Professor Olli S. Miettinen began his personal re ection on the future of the epidemiology [1]. He sought to highlight the fact that the role of the epidemiologist should be mainly focused on aetiological research. Nevertheless, the widespread idea still exists that epidemiology is limited to purely providing gures and descriptive data on the frequency and distribution of disease. Indeed, it is more than likely that the precise aim of those rst classic epidemiological steps, i. e. , methods essentially based on describing the distri- tion of a given disease, is still not all that well understood by many scientists, let alone the general public. Such descriptions seek to generate hypotheses and afford explanations for key factors (be these risk factors or the presumable causes th- selves), which might justify differences in terms of persons, time or place and, in turn, ultimately serve to develop preventive measures and/or gain quality-adjusted life years. To restrict the goals of epidemiology to activities exclusively concerned with reporting gures or even complex statistical results is a great mistake, one that renders it dif cult to take full advantage of the epidemiologist’s true role, which is “to study disease determinants and to assess the actual impact of factors involved in their development, distribution and dissemination”.