My birthday is next week, and since it’s a major milestone (old decade ends, new decade begins), I’ve been a bit introspective lately. Mostly about the various big changes in my life—what authors call “turning points,” where the protagonist hits a stumbling block and takes the story in a new direction). Looking back, I can…
XLH BLOG
Where does FGF23 come from?
Sometimes I get a little too full of myself (okay, settle down; you don’t have to be that emphatic in agreeing with me) and think I know all there is to know about XLH, from the inside out (except for the advanced organic chemistry). And then I read something that makes me realize that I…
Inozyme acquired by BioMarin
You may have heard me talking about Inozyme before, a tiny pharma company that has been working on a treatment for an ultra-rare segment of the chronic hypophosphatemia community, patients with an ENPP1 deficiency (rather than an excess of FGF23) that causes their phosphate wasting. Inozyme developed an enzyme replacement treatment, and undertook the supporting…
Pediatric phosphorus ranges
There’s SO MUCH research relevant to the chronic hypophosphatemia community these days that I can’t keep up. Some of it is repetitive and doesn’t add much, I think, and I’ll share some of those links another day, just in case there’s something you’ll find useful in them, but there’s also a good bit of research…
Aptamer v antibody
There’s a possible new treatment for XLH just starting in the FDA process, which you can read about here. But first, to understand the article, we need to learn the basics of some new terminology. Ten years ago, we had to learn what a monoclonal antibody was, in order to understand how burosumab works. Now,…
Whole-family disorder
Remember the patient-focused, patient-authored opinion piece about how XLH is a whole-body, whole-life, whole-family disorder? Well, there’s now some data to support the claim to the whole-family element. “The Burden of Adult X-Linked Hypophosphatemia on Carers and Family Members: A Mixed-Methods Study” was co-authored by an XLH patient and founder of XLH-UK, Oliver Gardiner. The…
Burosumab v. phos/calcitriol
Everyone with real insight into XLH, like patients, caregivers, and expert clinicians who have seen more than a handful of us, has known for years that burosumab is a huge improvement over the old phosphorus/calcitriol treatment. But there are still too many people in health care who don’t accept that conclusion yet, so it’s useful…
Healthcare resource use
More research to share! It’s been a busy few months of XLH-related publication. “A literature review of the healthcare resource use and productivity burden of X-linked hypophosphataemia,” is, as the title states, a review of published articles about how XLHers use healthcare resources (pharmacological products, surgery, dental treatment, hearing treatment, and secondary symptoms’ treatment, e.g.,…
Niche research
I mostly bring you chronic hypophosphatemia research that’s fairly broadly applicable to our community, but this week I have some resources that may be useful for sub-groups of our community. ENPP1 Deficiency. The first is some natural-history-type data on chronic hypophosphatemia patients whose symptoms are caused by ENPP1 deficiency. You may not recognize that label,…
Blood pressure research
There’s a new article about blood pressure in pediatric XLHers, “Office Blood Pressure and Obesity in Children with XLH.” The article starts off badly by calling XLH “the most common inherited form of hypophosphatemic rickets.” I’m cutting the authors a little slack, since they’re focused specifically on pediatrics (only kids can get rickets), but it’s…