Journal of Rare Diseases Research & Treatment

Loin Pain Hematuria Syndrome (LPHS) remains a rare disease but has a significant impact on those affected by it. Patients diagnosed with LPHS experience severe, constant or intermittent flank pain that radiates to the groin and may be exacerbated even by a gentle touch. These patients often require significant narcotic regimens for pain control and are unable to maintain a functional lifestyle. Previously, diagnosis has been made based on clinical presentation. One treatment for this syndrome is renal autotransplant; however, success rates are varied...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Barth syndrome (BTHS) is a rare X-linked genetic disorder characterized by cardiomyopathy, skeletal myopathy, neutropenia, and organic aciduria. The presence and severity of clinical manifestations are highly variable in BTHS, even among patients with identical gene mutations. Currently, less than 200 patients are diagnosed worldwide, but it is estimated that the disorder may be substantially under-diagnosed due to the variable spectrum of clinical manifestations. BTHS is caused by mutations in the gene tafazzin ( TAZ ), resulting in defective remodeling of cardiolipin (CL), the signature phospholipid of the mitochondrial membranes...

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Through a combination of in silico research and reviews of previous work, mechanisms by which nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) affects the inheritance and expressivity of Waardenburg syndrome is realized. While expressivity and inheritance both relate to biochemical processes underlying a gene's function, this research explores how alternative splicing and premature termination codons (PTC's) within mRNAs mutated in the disease are either translated into deleterious proteins or decayed to minimize expression of altered proteins...

Endogenous estrogens become carcinogens when excessive catechol estrogen quinone metabolites are formed. Specifically, the catechol estrogen-3,4-quinones can react with DNA to produce a large amount of specific depurinating estrogen-DNA adducts, formed at the N-3 of Ade and N-7 of Gua. Loss of these adducts leaves apurinic sites in the DNA, which can generate subsequent cancer-initiating mutations. Unbalanced estrogen metabolism yields excessive catechol estrogen-3,4-quinones, increasing formation of the depurinating estrogen-DNA adducts and the risk of initiating cancer...

Morquio patients, in many cases, present with severe tracheal narrowing and restrictive lung problems making them susceptible to high mortality arising from sleep apnea and related complications. Tracheal obstruction with growth imbalance, short neck, adeno and tonsillar hypertrophy, large mandible, and/or pectus carinatum also contributes to the challenges in managing the airway with intubation and extubation due to factors intrinsic to Morquio syndrome. Taken together, these issues lead to serious respiratory distress and life-threatening complications during anesthetic procedures...

Sickle cell disease affects more than 100,000 individuals in the United States, among whom disease severity varies considerably. One factor that influences disease severity is the sickle cell disease genotype. For this reason, clinical prevention and treatment guidelines tend to differentiate between genotypes. However, previous research suggests caution when using a claimsbased determination of sickle cell disease genotype in healthcare quality studies. The objective of this study was to describe the extent of miscoding for the major sickle cell disease genotypes in hospital discharge data...

Severe Combined ImmunoDeficiency (SCID) is defined as the lack or impairment of an adaptive immune system. Although SCID phenotypes are characteristically absent of T and B cells, many such SCID cellular profiles include the presence of NK cells. In human SCID patients, functional NK cells may impact the engraftment success of life saving procedures such as bone marrow transplantation. However, in animal models, a T cell-, B cell-, NK cell+ environment provides a valuable tool for asking specific questions about the extent of the innate immune system function as well as emerging NK targeted therapies against cancer...

Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated kinase (ATM) is a serine/threonine kinase. Mutations in the ATM gene cause a rare autosomal multisystemic disease known as Ataxia-telangiectasia (AT). Individuals with mutations in both copies of the ATM gene suffer from increased susceptibility to ionizing radiation, predisposition to cancer, insulin resistance, immune deficiency, and premature aging. Patients with one mutated allele make-up ~1.4 to 2% of the general population. These individuals are spared from most of the symptoms of the disease...

Lenz-Majewski syndrome (LMS) is a rare disease presenting with complex physical and mental abnormalities. Whole exome sequencing performed on five LMS-affected individuals has identified gain-of-function mutations in the PTDSS1 gene encoding phosphatidylserine synthase 1 (PSS1) enzyme. These mutations all rendered PSS1 insensitive to PS-mediated product inhibition. In a recent study we showed that uncontrolled PS production by these mutant PSS1 enzymes lead to the accumulation of PS in the ER where it is not detected in normal cells...

In recent years several methods have been proposed to assign pairwise mechanism- based similarity scores to human diseases. Despite their differences in approach and performance, these methods work in a somewhat similar manner: first a set of biomolecules (genes, proteins, chemicals, etc.) is associated with each disease, and then a measure is defined to calculate the similarity between the sets assigned to a pair of diseases. Since the similarity score between two diseases is defined based on the underlying molecular processes, a high score may hint at a shared cause, and therefore a similar treatment, for both diseases...

Pseudomonas (P.) aeruginosa is a Gram negative bacterium widely dispersed in the environment which can cause acute and chronic infections in humans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the overall incidence of P. aeruginosa infections in USA hospitals averages about 0.4% (4/1000 discharges), and the bacterium is the fourth most commonly-isolated nosocomial pathogen accounting for 10.1% of all hospital-acquired infections. P. aeruginosa keratitis is a severe infection of the eye, progresses rapidly and remains a leading cause of corneal ulcers worldwide...

Hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSPs) are a group of inherited neurodegenerative conditions characterised by retrograde degeneration of the longest motor neurons in the corticospinal tract, resulting in muscle weakness and spasticity of the lower limbs. To date more than 70 genetic loci have been associated with HSP, however the majority of cases are caused by mutations that encode proteins responsible for generating and maintaining tubular endoplasmic reticulum (ER) structure. These ER-shaping proteins are vital for the long-term survival of axons, however the mechanisms by which mutations in these proteins give rise to HSP remain poorly understood...

Neurofibromatosis type 2 is characterized by bilateral vestibular schwannomas, which are benign tumors that originate from the nerve sheath and damage the nerve as they grow, causing neurological dysfunction such as hearing loss. Current standard radiation therapy can further augment hearing loss by inducing local damage to mature nerve tissue. Treatment with bevacizumab, a Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF)-specific antibody, is associated with tumor control and hearing improvement in NF2 patients; however, its effect is not durable and its mechanism of action on improving nerve function is unknown...

Gene therapy by either gene insertion or editing is an exciting curative therapeutic option for monogenic hemoglobin disorders like sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia. The safety and efficacy of gene transfer techniques has markedly improved with the use of lentivirus vectors. The clinical translation of this technology has met with good success, although key limitations include number of engraftable transduced hematopoietic stem cells and adequate transgene expression that results in complete correction of β0 thalassemia major...

Right ventricular (RV) failure is the major cause of death among patients with pulmonary hypertension. However, differences between the RV and left ventricle (LV) of the adult heart have not been defined, despite myocytes from these two ventricles originate from different progenitor cells. The lack of such knowledge interferes with developing therapeutic strategies to protect the RV. The goal of this study was to identify possible differences between stress responses in the RV and LV free walls of adult rats...

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is rare, but patients who are diagnosed with this disease still suffer from a lack of satisfactory treatment strategies to prolong survival. While currently approved drugs for PAH have some benefits, these vasodilators only have limited efficacy for eliminating pulmonary vascular remodeling and reducing mortality. Thus, our laboratory has been exploring the use of aggressive drugs, which are capable of causing apoptotic cell death, to treat PAH. We have so far found that three classes of anti-tumor agents, including anthracyclines, taxanes, and proteasome inhibitors, are capable of reducing pulmonary vascular thickness in rats with PAH...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.