Author Archives: Hawken Miller

Sarah Lynn Mays learned she wouldn’t be returning to Northwestern University for her scheduled intrathecal injection of tominersen when her younger sister called to give the news — Roche was stopping dosing for its Phase 3 clinical trial of the Huntington’s disease treatment.

As anyone affected by a rare disease knows, treating the illness while trying to go about everyday life is an expensive undertaking.  But exactly how expensive — in terms of direct and indirect costs across rare disease populations — might still come as a surprise: almost…

Many diseases have their own awareness color — breast cancer is pink, muscular dystrophy is green, and AIDS is red, for example — but what’s the significance of pink, green, blue, and purple lights side-by-side? These are the colors most often used to represent Rare Disease Day. This…

Diagnosed with sickle cell disease as a 6-month-old, Tristan Lee has faced a lot of challenges over his 37 years of life. But from a young age, he also learned how to turn those trials into triumphs. At age 9, a stroke due to his disease left him paralyzed…

Note: This story was updated Feb. 9, 2021, to clarify details surrounding the grant Chronic Care Collaborative received from Adira.  Greg Smiley’s world changed abruptly in 2013. He was racing down a mountain road on an outback cycling trip in South Africa, when he hit an obstruction in the road…

Leaders in the U.S. rare disease community came together recently for a webinar to present helpful information on how to start a nonprofit and patient registry. They shared about how their respective organizations came to be, as well as the benefits of creating patient registries and how they can help…

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of a rare disease film festival originally slated for May, its organizers set out to find a new way to bring the films to an audience.  Co-founders Daniel DeFabio and Bo Bigelow, who are both fathers of children with…

Huntington’s disease affects an average of 1 in 10,000 people worldwide. But in small, remote pockets of South America, its prevalence skyrockets to nearly 1 in 10. Reasons identified for this include geographic isolation, marriage between cousins, high reproduction rates, and a lack of education.

The Living Rare, Living Stronger Patient and Family Forum, originally set for May 14–16 in Cleveland, Ohio, has been postponed until July 18–20 because of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 pandemic. The event’s sponsor, the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD),…

As a high-school student in the suburbs of Boston, Seth Rotberg watched his mother’s mental and physical health deteriorate because of Huntington’s disease. Rotberg was embarrassed to go out in public. People would stare, despite the 15-year-old’s best attempts to explain that her drunk-like movements were…