The Connection Between Rare Disease Research and Treatments for Common Diseases - Dr. Jules Berman, Pathologist and Author

Raise the Line

Regular listeners to Raise the Line know that research into rare diseases should matter to everybody because it has led to treatments for much more common conditions that have improved and saved millions of lives. Statins are usually the prime example of that. Well, on this episode we're going to get into much more detail on this point with someone who literally wrote the book on the subject: Dr. Jules Berman. His 2014 work published by Elsevier, Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs, Keys to Understanding and Treating the Common Diseases, shows that much of what we now know about common diseases has been achieved by studying rare diseases, and therefore, accelerating progress in the field of rare diseases will lead to yet more advances affecting common conditions. “If you have a rare disease and you think about the phenotype that results from it, you can often find that same phenotype occurring much more commonly in acquired disease, so the treatment for the rare disease can often help people with the acquired disease.” Don’t miss this provocative conversation with host Michael Carrese as Dr. Berman shares why he thinks researching one rare disease at a time is a flawed approach, especially in light of his belief that there are more than 50,000 rare conditions.