News

Football and science seem to be disparate fields of play at first glance, but the nonprofit Uplifting Athletes is finding common ground by leveraging the popularity of college gridiron games to fund research for rare diseases. Its nearly two dozen chapters — representing college football teams across the nation…

A new research project in Australia is investigating what underlies sleep-disordered breathing — an umbrella term for abnormal breathing patterns during sleep — often seen in children and adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). The goal, according to the researchers, is to better understand “breathing control stability” in children with…

The first healthy volunteers were dosed in a Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating Inversago Pharma‘s INV-102, a potential therapy for Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and other metabolic disorders. According to a company press release, the trial, underway in Canada, started dosing following a “No Objection Letter” from Health Canada.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding a public advisory committee meeting regarding LV-101 (intranasal carbetocin) as a potential treatment of distress behaviors and insatiable hunger in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) patients. The Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting, to be held virtually Nov. 4 from 10…

One year of treatment with Soleno Therapeutics’ investigational oral therapy diazoxide choline controlled release, known as DCCR, significantly reduced excessive appetite and disease-related behaviors in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) patients, according to top-line data from an extension study of the DESTINY PWS Phase 3 trial. These trajectories were significantly…

People with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) have smaller pituitary glands than their typically-developing peers, according to data from a small study. The findings also suggest that altered pituitary size is associated with behavioral abnormalities in PWS. Results were published in the journal Biomarkers in Neuropsychiatry, in the study “…

The mean total annual costs of raising a child with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) — an estimate that takes into account services use, impact on parental income, and care arrangements — is more than AU$57,500 (about $42,500) per child, according to an Australian study of four rare disorders that cause…

An $11.2-million, five-year grant has been awarded by the Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to uncover high-resolution details of the entire human genome. This project should help better understand the genome’s structure and function, as well as provide important clues about the…

Vision problems such as lazy eye, farsightedness, and strabismus — when the eyes don’t line up in the same direction — are more common in people with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) than among their healthy peers, a study shows. These findings, along with data showing that vision problems may negatively affect…

Children and adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) are not at higher risk of developing a severe COVID-19 infection, according to results from a survey involving more than 500 patients in France. These findings were particularly surprising in terms of the adult population, which typically has several known risk factors for severe…