Online forums have markedly altered how patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals communicate and connect. Even when miles apart, people can establish supportive relationships, share experiences and information, and sometimes simply vent. Bionews Services, a leading online health, science, and research publication company, has been rolling out…
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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,…
Lung inflammation caused by a seemingly treatable and common infection may drive the onset of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in people who carry genetic risk factors for the disease. A simple viral infection — such as a bad flu — was able to trigger PAH development in rats with…
A combination therapy of endothelin receptor antagonists (ERA) plus phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors (PDE5i) — two different agents that induce blood vessels’ widening and relaxation —improves exercise capacity, and reduces the risk of death and disease worsening in people with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a review study finds. The…
A Phase 2 clinical trial for levosimendan, a potential treatment for pulmonary hypertension (PH) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (PH-HFpEF), will soon have three more active sites for participant enrollment, Tenax Therapeutics announced. There now are 12 clinical sites that have initiated the study, and…
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…
The levels of survivin protein in the blood may help determine if surgery to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) will be successful in people with congenital heart disease (CHD), according to new research. Findings in a rat model of PAH also suggest that the amount of survivin…
Disrupting the vascular remodeling feedback signaling loop mediated by CD146-HIF-1α can effectively prevent the development of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in mice, a study found. This suggests that medicines that could target CD146-HIF-1α signals may represent a potential strategy to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension…
People who were born prematurely, especially in recent years, are more likely to develop pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) later in life, a study says. The findings of the study, “Increased risk of pulmonary hypertension following premature birth,” were published in the journal BMC Pediatrics. PAH is a rare,…
Blood levels of uric acid may be a predictive biomarker of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in people with scleroderma, according to a recent study. The levels of this normal body waste product, formed when chemicals called purines break down, also may be a biomarker for disease…
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,…
Riociguat increases the risk of death and serious adverse events in people with pulmonary hypertension (PH) associated with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia (IIP), and should not be prescribed to those patients, final results of a Phase 2 study show. The study, “Riociguat for idiopathic interstitial pneumonia-associated pulmonary hypertension…
