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Article:
Life-Saving Pediatric Drug Becomes Readily Available to Those in Need by: ARA Content (ARA) - We can all sympathize with the frustration people experience waiting for a new drug that is being tested for a certain disorder. Imagine you have a child with a rare disorder and the only drug effective for treating the disorder is not only extremely hard to obtain, but available only through a nationally-administered random selection process. For many American families, this dilemma is a harsh reality. Patients suffering from a host of difficult to treat orphan disorders have found marked relief from using HP Acthar Gel. Some disorders Acthar helps include seizure complex in babies and young children, referred to as West's syndrome or infantile spasm; Still's disease and ulcerative colitis; Bell's palsy; multiple sclerosis; adrenocortical insufficiency and non-endocrine disorders that are responsive to glucocorticoids. For the past four years, however, the drug has only been available through a limited access program administered by the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), a federation of more that 135 non-profit health organizations serving people with rare disorders. U.S. physicians who were interested in obtaining Acthar Gel for their patients with life-threatening or severely debilitating conditions who did not respond to any other treatment were given first access to the drug. Others with 'non-life-threatening' cases had to enroll in a computerized random selection process administered by NORD. An estimated '1
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