Immune rejection and half-matched donors are risk factors for developing autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) following blood cancer-treating stem cell transplants, a study found. Titled “Autoimmune hemolytic anemia after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in adults: A southern China multicenter experience,” the study was published in the…
Physicians should be on the lookout for chronic medical conditions, such as cold agglutinin disease (CAD), that may affect the outcomes of older patients while recovering from cancer extraction surgery, according to a case report. The study, “Perioperative management of cold agglutinin autoimmune hemolytic anemia in an…
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,…
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…
Researchers recently reported the rare case of a 69-year-old Japanese man with paroxysmal atrial fribrillation (PAF) — occasional periods of an irregular, very fast heart rate — who developed hyperkalemia (high potassium levels in the blood) possibly due to cold agglutinin disease (CAD) after undergoing cryoballoon ablation…
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,…
A recent case report alerts clinicians to the fact that cold agglutinin disease (CAD) can arise as a complication of Pneumococcal vaccination. This is the first documented case of an adult who developed CAD associated with a specific self-reactive antibody (anti-Pr) following pneumococcal vaccination. The study, “Anti-Pr…
Removal of white cells (a type of immune cell) from blood before a transfusion and early surgical removal of the spleen may help protect patients with a genetic blood disease from developing autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA), a condition where red blood cells are attacked by a person’s own immune…
Screening newborns for genetic diseases with treatments that can prevent crippling or deadly progression, especially for rare disorders, has a ways to go in the United States. No state today tests for all 35 disorders recommended under a federal screening panel, and even in those that come close, rare…
Oklahoma suffers more tornadoes than any other state, has the highest per-capita rate of women in U.S. prisons, ranks second in the number of teen births per 100,000 teenage girls, and has the nation’s third-highest rate of uninsured residents — with 13.9% of all Oklahomans lacking health coverage. As if…
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