NIH Launches Program to Study Undiagnosed Diseases

The National Institutes of Health is launching a clinical research program intended for people with undiagnosed diseases.

Called the Undiagnosed Disease Program, the initiative will reunite physicians and researchers from various fields who will analyze rare and undiagnosed disorders and diseases.

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH said the program was a response to the fact that there are a small number of patients who suffer from symptoms which “do not correspond to known conditions,” thus making their treatment extremely difficult.

“The goal of NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Program is two-pronged: to improve disease management for individual patients and to advance medical knowledge in general,” Zerhouni said, according to Reuters.

The program will enroll just 100 patients annually who must be referred by their doctors or other health care providers. Dr. William Gahl, clinical director at the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute said the program will “deal with those cases that have truly confounded medical experts.”

Yet the program does not promise a sure diagnose, but patients are offered a chance to be reevaluated by a team of renowned specialists from specialties such as endocrinology, immunology, oncology, dermatology, dentistry, cardiology and genetics.

At the same time, the program will offer a chance to patients who exhausted all their financial possibilities too. The program will debut in July.