Spinal muscular atrophy

AFM-Téléthon is delighted with the positive opinion issued by the French National Authority for Health (HAS) concerning the extension of neonatal screening for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) to the entire French territory. This significant step forward is based in particular on the results of the Depisma pilot programme, launched in early 2023 by AFM-Téléthon in … [Read more]

A growing number of infants diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (type I or type II) are benefiting from adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene therapy. Clinicians at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital report on their respiratory progress: 15 infants (including one case of SMA type II) with a median age of 8.6 months (3.8 to 12.6 months) were … [Read more]

Brazilian researchers have compiled data from the literature on one of three innovative drugs designed to treat children with type 1 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA1). The onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma®) is the first gene therapy product to have marketing authorisation for this indication: the authors selected four publications corresponding to three clinical trials (START, STR1VE-US and … [Read more]

Researchers in Hong Kong investigated the extent to which treatment with intrathecal nusinersen influenced the risk of bilateral hip dislocation, a complication very frequently observed in spinal muscular atrophy type II (SMA II) linked to the SMN1 gene : 10 children with SMA type II were included in the study, which ran for three and … [Read more]

A study of data from 268 patients with 4 copies of the SMN2 gene from the SMArtCARE registry showed : an average age of first symptoms of 6.4 years, 55% of patients present their first symptoms before the age of 3 and almost 95% are symptomatic by the age of 18, 3% have never acquired … [Read more]

German researchers have applied a technology designed to explore, non-invasively, patients suffering from proximal spinal muscular atrophy linked to the SMN1 gene (SMA) and benefiting from innovative therapies: opto-acoustic imaging is a non-invasive technique which enables variations in signal at the level of muscle tissue to be measured in three dimensions, depending on its trophicity … [Read more]

Between January 2019 and September 2023, the pharmacovigilance database of the European Medicines Agency collected 661 individual reports of adverse reactions linked to Zolgensma®, representing a total of 2744 adverse reactions. In more than 92% of cases, only Zolgensma® was suspected. More than 50% of adverse reactions were classified as serious: 21% resulted in hospitalisation … [Read more]

German clinicians were interested in the swallowing disorders present in young patients with SMN1-related proximal spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), treated or untreated, and relatively unexplored until now: the target population consisted of young children with SMA aged between 0 and 24 months, after using the main existing tools and interviewing a panel of experts, the … [Read more]

US physiotherapists have tested a support harness linked to pulleys and a metal frame to facilitate the child’s movements in the three planes of space at home: 32 children with SMN1-related proximal spinal muscular atrophy (with 2 or 3 copies of the SMN2 gene) aged on average 2.9 years took part in this prospective study, … [Read more]