The FDA classifies diseases which affect less than 200,000 people at any given time as an orphan disease. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study that stated clinical trials for drugs developed to treat orphan diseases are “lower quality” than trials for non-orphan diseases.
One such orphan disease is mesothelioma, a deadly cancer that affects 3,000 Americans on an annual basis. Asbestos is known to cause this cancer, which affects the lining of internal organs, especially the lungs. People afflicted with the disease can employ a mesothelioma attorney to gain compensation for their care.
The researchers of the study included doctors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and assessed data from clinical trials conducted between 2004 and 2010. They concluded that clinical trials for orphan diseases and cancers “were more likely to be smaller and use nonrandomized and unblended trial designs,” and that more patients involved in these trail were more likely to have added adverse events.
Pharmaceutical companies and researchers are less likely to expend the money and time taken to develop a drug to treat orphan diseases because fewer people are afflicted by these diseases.
To a person suffering from mesothelioma development of an effective drug treatment could prolong their lives.
People who have been exposed to asbestos deserve financial help for the suffering they endure and a mesothelioma lawyer can obtain the funds necessary to improve the quality of their remaining time. Mesothelioma attorneys have won millions in settlements for their clients.
