Rare Diseases Epidemiology: Update and Overview

This second edition of the book about Rare Diseases Epidemiology aims to highlight the progress of rare diseases research and related activities since the first volume published. As with the previous book, this update provides a comprehensive list of issues and adds new authors who are leaders in their different areas of expertise related to rare diseases at national and international levels.

Rare diseases and orphan drugs are challenges for patients and families but also for physicians, researchers, and policy-makers in both the public and private sectors. This book aims to help all of them to address topics like health care policies, societal issues and clinical and experimental research. Readers will discover methods and procedures to address a variety of questions like cases of undiagnosed rare diseases, patient registries and biobanks, health care and public health approach to rare diseases, orphan drugs and new therapies, cost-effectiveness analyses, prevention, clinical and epidemiology of individual and groups of related rare diseases, novel advances in study design and data analyses, national and international policies and social issues. Within each one of these general issues, advances, new challenges and opportunities to address significant health care issues are described across thirty-two chapters.

Editors and all authors providing chapters include globally recognized experts in different areas of rare diseases, including epidemiology, public health, health economics and pharmacology, statistics, and basic, clinical and translational research. People engaged in policy formulation decisions on rare diseases as well as patient representatives relate their own point of view about social constraints they live under on a daily basis. Renowned research investigators, highly-skilled clinicians, and recognized patient leaders are included as contributing authors to this new book about rare diseases. In fact, two of the editors are the current President and President Elect of the International Conference on Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs and the third one is a board member of this society.

The book has been written for all stakeholders but mainly for those involved in the many issues related to rare diseases. They can discover new ways for dealing with important matters related to the prevention, diagnosis, natural history, treatments, and research of rare diseases and the development of orphan products.

Autorentext

Manuel Posada, MD, PhD (Please expand as you feel appropriate) is a specialist in Internal Medicine and in Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He has considerable expertise in areas such as multivariate analyses, medical statistics and research methodology. In his current position as Director of the Institute of Rare Diseases Research (IIER), Institute of Health Carlos III he leads a broad range of rare diseases activities in Spain in areas such as epidemiological and public health research. Dr. Posada is also the Director of the National Biobank on Rare Diseases (ISCIII) and the National Rare Diseases Registry. Dr. Posada is an Independent expert of the Commission Expert Group of Rare Diseases (CEGRD), European Commission and a member of the Advisory Board of the European Commission Platform Rare Diseases Registration. He is currently the President of the International Conference of Orphan Drugs and Rare Diseases (ICORD)

Domenica Taruscio, M.D., is the Director of the Italian National Centre for Rare Diseases at the Italian National Institute of Health and of the National Rare Diseases Registry. She is a specialist in Histopathology and carried out post-doctoral studies in Human Genetics at Yale University (CT-USA) and in Bioethics. For decades, her efforts have been mainly directed to face the many and complex challenges posed by rare diseases and has addressed them from various facets: from science to society, from experimental research to public health, from training health professionals to the empowerment of patients and their families - having always at heart the quality of life of rare disease patients and of their families.

Stephen C. Groft, Pharm.D. is currently a Senior Advisor to the Director, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the NIH, USA. He assisted in establishing the Office of Orphan Products Development at FDA in 1982 and served as the Director of NIH's Office of Rare Diseases Research from 1993-2014 stimulating rare diseases research and developing information for patients, health care providers, research investigators, the biopharmaceutical industry, and the public about rare diseases, ongoing and completed research and clinical trials, and patient advocacy groups. Numerous initiatives were established in this role including the establishment of the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center, the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium the International Conference on Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs, the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, assisted in the development of the Undiagnosed Diseases Program at NIH and the global Undiagnosed Diseases Network International, and developed common data elements for patient registries. ORDR co-sponsored numerous scientific conferences to assist in identifying research priorities and developing research agendas for the investigation of rare diseases.

Zusammenfassung

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.

Inhalt

Part I Introduction.- Rare Diseases: Joining Mainstream Research and Treatment Based on Reliable Epidemiological Data.- Part II Rare diseases diagnosis.- Undiagnosed diseases: Italy-US collaboration and international efforts to tackle rare and common diseases lacking a diagnosis.- Intellectual disability & rare disorders: A diagnostic challenge.- Improved diagnosis and care for rare diseases through implementation of a precision public health framework.- Part III Registries, Natural History of Rare Diseases and Biobanks.- Natural history, trial readiness and gene discovery: advances in patient registries for neuromuscular disease.- Facilitating Clinical Studies in Rare Diseases.- Rare Diseases Biospecimens and patient registries: Interoperability for research promotion, a European example: EuroBioBank and Spain RDR-BioNER.- Data Quality in Rare Diseases Registries.- Preparing data at the source to foster interoperability across r are disease resources.- Part IV Orphan drugs and therapies.- Incentivizing orphan product development: United States Food and Drug Administration orphan incentive programs.- Post-approval Studies for Rare Disease Treatments and Orphan Drugs.- Evidence-Based Medicine and Rare Diseases.- Health technology assessment and appraisal of therapies for rare diseases.- New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Drugs.- Patient empowerment and involvement in research.- Part V Cost-Effectiveness and Cost-of-illness.- Cost-effectiveness methods and newborn screening assessment.- Cost-of-illness in rare diseases.- Part VI Rare Diseases Prevention.- Primary prevention of congenital anomalies: special focus on environmental chemicals and other toxicants, maternal health and health services and infectious diseases.- Newborn Screening: Beyond the Spot.- Part VII New Research Perspectives in RD.- …