News

For people with thymomas, certain risk factors, such as clusters of developing B-cells, called germinal centers, in their thymuses, may make them more likely to develop myasthenia gravis (MG), a study suggests. Other factors that may contribute to MG development in people with thymomas include higher levels of…

Children with ocular myasthenia gravis respond well to treatment, as largely do children with generalized myasthenia gravis, according to a single-site study that found no “significant differences” in response rates. Still, half of its 22 ocular patients achieved remission, its researchers said. Children with ocular disease are also diagnosed at…

Surgical removal of the thymus before the development of generalized myasthenia gravis is associated with higher remission rates in people with ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG) compared with patients who underwent the surgery after their disease generalized, a new study suggests. The study, titled “Thymectomy in ocular…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $7.8 million for the launch of a rare disease network, called MGNet, to drive research in myasthenia gravis and which will be led by experts from George Washington University, Yale University, and Duke University. The network…

Current patient- and physician-reported measures of disease severity and clinical response effectively reflect rapid improvements associated with plasma exchange in myasthenia gravis (MG) patients, a study reports. These findings support the use of these MG-specific outcome measures in clinical trials of rapidly effective therapies for MG, such as plasma…

UCB will add the investigational candidate zilucoplan to its therapeutic pipeline for the treatment of people with myasthenia gravis (MG), after announcing it will acquire the therapy’s developer, Ra Pharmaceuticals. Two Phase 3 trials are currently recruiting participants with generalized myasthenia gravis: the RAISE trial (…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $7.8 million to researchers at George Washington University to launch a network for improving research, treatment, and education in myasthenia gravis. This will be the first large and organized effort to focus on the disorder, which affects 20 in 100,000…

Ra Pharmaceuticals announced the first patient enrolled in RAISE, the company’s Phase 3 clinical trial assessing the effectiveness of zilucoplan  as a therapy for generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG), has started receiving treatment. Zilucoplan, formerly known as RA101495, is an artificial peptide that binds to complement 5…

Treatment with immunosuppressive agents and Mestinon (pyridostigmine) protects against transition from ocular myesthenia gravis (MG) to a generalized form of the disease among patients with anti-acetylcholine receptor (AchR) antibodies, according to new research. Women, current or former smokers, and patients with thymus hyperplasia (enlargement) or…

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…