Rare Diseases & Orphan Drugs

Orphan drugs potentiality

An orphan drug is referred medicinal agent which has been developed to treat a rare medical illness or situation, the condition itself being defined to as a rare disease. Rare disease, also known as an "orphan disease", is any type of disease which affects a small percentage of the population. Majority of rare diseases are genetic, and hence are present throughout the individual's entire life, even if symptoms don’t appear immediately. Many rare diseases appear early in life, and about 30 % of children with rare diseases will die before getting 5 year old. With only a solo diagnosed patient, ribose-5-phosphate isomerase deficiency is presently considered to be the rarest genetic disease. No single cut-offs number has been decided upon for which a disease is considered rare. An illness may be considered rare in one part of the world, or in a group of people, but still be common in another country or group of people. According to a research over 55 million people are estimated to suffer from a rare disease in Europe and in the US, global estimates are between 5000 to 7000 rare diseases and new rare diseases are revealed every week and for many treatments is not available.