Cardiac Amyloidosis

With the first drug treatments for cardiac amyloidosis recently entering the market, there has been an explosion of interest to diagnose and care for these patients. It is considered a rare disease, but many experts now say it is actually just be under diagnosed. The disease is caused by protein misfolding. Normally soluble proteins in the bloodstream become insoluble and deposit abnormally in the tissues and organs throughout the body. There are three main kinds of amyloid that affect the heart, light chain amyloid (AL) and two types of transthyretin amyloid (ATTR or TTR). The first type of ATTR is hereditary, or familial amyloid, and the second is wild type, or age-related TTR amyloid. Nuclear imaging, echocardiography, CT and MRI all play roles in diagnosing amyloid and in determining the subtype, which is required for targeted treatment. 

FDA fast-tracks review process for cardiac amyloidosis drug

Tafamidis, Pfizer’s treatment for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), has been granted a priority review designation from the FDA, potentially speeding its path to approval.

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Why Cleveland Clinic began screening carpal tunnel patients for cardiac amyloidosis

Cleveland Clinic researchers identified amyloid deposits in 10.2 percent of patients undergoing carpal tunnel release surgery, suggesting biopsies of hand tissue could be an early signal of life-threatening cardiac amyloidosis.

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Tafamidis shows promise for treating cardiac amyloidosis

Research presented this week at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich suggests a new treatment may be emerging for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy—a condition previously thought to be rare and untreatable.

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Cardiac amyloidosis remains underreported in US

Twice as many U.S. deaths due to cardiac amyloidosis were reported in 2015 than in 1979, but a study in JAMA Cardiology suggests the disease remains vastly underdiagnosed.

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Building Programs for Overlooked Patients

In the era of the Quadruple Aim, there’s no shortage of studies, media coverage and commentary on how our healthcare systems may be overusing resources.

Eidos Therapeutics Initiates Phase 2 Clinical Trial for AG10 Targeting Transthyretin Amyloidosis Cardiomyopathy

SAN FRANCISCO, May 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Eidos Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing a novel oral therapy to treat transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis (ATTR), today announced dosing of the first patient in the Phase 2 clinical trial of AG10 in patients with ATTR cardiomyopathy.

Image reconstruction algorithm, MRI-derived heart strain values can aid prognosis in amyloidosis patients

Recent research found strain parameters taken from a cine MRI-based deformable registration algorithm (DRA) can determine the severity of amyloid buildup in the heart and may provide prognostic information on patients with light-chain (AL) amyloidosis.

SNMMI: Scanning for cardiac amyloid could help predict heart attacks

While amyloid imaging is typically discussed with regard to diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, a team of French researchers, presenting at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2015 annual meeting, have found that amyloid scans of the heart can predict major cardiac events.

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