View clinical trials related to Rare Diseases.
Filter by:Kallmann syndrome (KS), also known as congenital hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (CHH), is a rare endocrine disorder that is characterized by failure to undergo puberty combined with infertility. KS/CHH patients face a number of psychosocial burdens related to delays in diagnosis, inadequate access to expert care, and lack of information about the condition. As such, there is some evidence to suggest that KS/CHH patients have unmet health needs. This study aims to identify the needs of patients and understand the issues that must be overcome to achieve improved health and quality of life.
The purpose of this study is to identify the biochemical/genetic defects in erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP). People with EPP have skin sensitivity to sunlight and occasionally develop liver disease. In this study, the investigators hope to learn the nature of the biochemical/genetic defects in EPP because this may help explain the severity of these clinical features.
The birth of a child with a disorder of sex development (DSD) is stressful for parents and members of the healthcare team. The "right" decisions about gender assignment (is it a boy? a girl?) and the best course of action (e.g., should there be surgery? what kind? when?) are not obvious. While there have been large advances in diagnostic assessments like genetic and endocrine testing, the tests do not always show what caused the DSD. And, even when the tests do reveal an explanation for the DSD, knowing what happened genetically or hormonally does not usually lead to a single "correct" treatment plan. Instead, it is likely that there are different acceptable treatment options - and parents will need to make decisions based, in part, on their personal preferences, values, and cultural background. Adding more stress to the situation is knowledge that many of the decisions that need to be made by parents early in a child's life are irreversible and exert life-long consequences for the child and the family. To support parents becoming actively involved in making such decisions, and to reduce the likelihood of future worry and regret about decisions that have been made, the investigators will create a decision support tool (DST). The DST will help educate families about typical and atypical sex development of the body, the process by which DSD are diagnosed (especially how to interpret genetic test results), and possible relationships between diagnostic/genetic testing, decisions about care, and known consequences of those decisions on their child and entire family. The DST will be used by parents of young children together with their child's health care provider. The investigators will bring together a network of researchers, health care providers, representatives of patient support and advocacy organizations, and parents of children with DSD to share their experiences. Participants of this network will be involved at each stage of creating the DST, revising it, and putting it into practice. At the end of this project, the investigators will have a fully formed DST that will be available for parents to use with their child's healthcare team as they are first learning their child may have a DSD.
Exploratory study to examine the effect(s) of Imatinib mesylate treatment on life threatening rare diseases with known associations to one or more Imatinib mesylate -sensitive tyrosine kinases, and to identify the contribution of specific protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) of that specific disease.