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Transbronchial lung cryobiopsy — a relatively new method of collecting lung tissue for analysis — safely and successfully helps to provide a definitive sarcoidosis diagnosis when the usual and less-invasive diagnostic tools are insufficient, a Portuguese study suggests. The study, “Diagnostic yield and safety of transbronchial…

Tears in blood vessels of the heart can occur in people with cardiac sarcoidosis, a case report found, although the incidence of this complication appears to be low. The report, “Spontaneous coronary artery dissection in cardiac sarcoidosis,” was published in Oxford Medical Case Reports. Spontaneous coronary…

Depression and anxiety may worsen the quality of life and lung function of patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis, a study has found. The findings of the study, “Psychological burden associated with worse clinical outcomes in sarcoidosis,” were published in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research. Statistics…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the designation of breakthrough therapy to Ofev (nintedanib) for the treatment of patients with sarcoidosis and other types of progressive fibrosing interstitial lung diseases (ILDs). The breakthrough designation is given to medications that provide significant advantages over…

Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) significantly reduced disease symptoms in people with sarcoidosis, and helped to reduce their daily dose of corticosteroids, a small study suggests. The study, “Mycophenolate mofetil as an alternative treatment in sarcoidosis,” was published in the…

The current scoring system used to assess the urgency of lung transplants, called LAS (lung allocation score), fails to predict the risk of death in people with sarcoidosis, a single center study suggests. The study “Mortality for sarcoidosis patients on the transplant wait list in the…

Next month’s annual conference of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) in Washington, D.C., couldn’t come at a better time, says Marshall Summar, MD, chairman of NORD’s board of directors. “The pace of discovery in rare diseases has gone from brisk to hypersonic,” Summar told Bionews Services, publisher…

Sarcoidosis patients and their partners experience a lower quality of life because of nonspecific disease-associated symptoms compared to healthy people, a new study demonstrated.  The study, titled “Quality of Life of Couples Living with Sarcoidosis,” was published in the…

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…