Rare diseases offered free treatment by NIH

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WASHINGTON (AP) — They're the cold cases of medicine, patients with diseases so rare and mysterious that they've eluded diagnosis for years.

The National Institutes of Health is seeking those patients — and ones who qualify could get some free care at the government's top research hospital as scientists study why they're sick.

"These patients are to a certain extent abandoned by the medical profession because a brick wall has been hit," said Dr. William Gahl, who helped develop the NIH's new Undiagnosed Diseases Program. "We're trying to remove some of that."

The pilot program, announced Monday, can only recruit about 100 patients a year. But federal health officials hope that unraveling some of these super-rare diseases in turn will provide clues to more common illnesses.

USA Today