About SMA REACH UK
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive genetic disease that affects the motor neurons of the voluntary muscles that are used for activities such as crawling, walking, head and neck control, and swallowing.
Approximately 1 in 6000 babies born are affected and about 1 in 40 people are genetic carriers. Childhood SMA can be divided into three subtypes depending on disease onset and severity. All subtypes result in the degeneration of motor neurons controlling voluntary muscles with proximal limb and trunk muscle weakness leading to respiratory distress and in the most severe cases, ultimately death.
Recent advances into drug development have resulted in specific drug treatments becoming available for SMA. Other compounds are also under investigation via clinical trials. Over the last few years, this has considerably pushed the need to monitor clinical and cost effectiveness of the therapies and to be prepared for further clinical trials. The SMA Research and Clinical Hub UK – SMA REACH UK – provides the ongoing necessary robust clinical and research network to design and improve upon outcome measures that will capture clinical effectiveness and be meaningful and suitable for both people who have SMA as well as for clinical trials
SMA REACH UK is involved with an international initiative called ISMAC (International SMA Consortium) with two prestigious Networks: the Paediatric Neuromuscular Clinical Research Network in the United States (Principal Investigator Richard Finkel) and the Italian SMA Network (Principle Investigator Eugenio Mercuri).
The consortium is in collaboration with Biogen to collect anonymised natural history data of SMA patients covering the entire spectrum of SMA severity.
SMA REACH UK is also supported by SMA UK, Muscular Dystrophy UK and Treat SMA charities.
