Do you have pets? If so, have they been good companions? Following my diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in January 2017, I faced periods of loneliness and isolation. That was especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife, Susan, has always been a cat person, while…
My dog, Beau, is the newest companion on my IPF journey
GRI Bio has been given the green light to begin a Phase 2a clinical trial testing its lead program candidate GRI-0621, a natural killer T-cell (NKT)-targeted therapy, in people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in the U.K. The U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) cleared the…
Five years ago today, the phone rang early in the morning. “We have lungs,” the voice on the other end announced. The first words I heard that day were months in the making. My mom, Holly, had been in the intensive care unit for almost 12 weeks following an…
Solutions are seldom permanent. I want you to let that marinate for a minute. When I learned I had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in January 2017, I was several months into my diagnostic journey. As I learned more about IPF and patient experiences, I concluded that there wasn’t…
Adults with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) who had greater diversity of mouth bacteria tended to have worse lung function and a higher risk of death than did those with a less diverse bacteria population in their mouths, a new large-scale study shows. Interestingly, however, those with a higher proportion…
Recurrent lung infections are exhausting, both physically and mentally. As a patient living with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive and life-threatening lung disease, respiratory infections have become part of my life. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy to deal with. When I read a fellow columnist’s recent post…
The journey of a pulmonary fibrosis patient and a post-transplant patient have one big thing in common: We must take the correct dose of the proper medications at the appropriate time. So what happens when much of the pharmacy infrastructure fails on a random weekday? Medication management is…
Acute exacerbations, or sudden bouts of symptom worsening, increase the mortality risk after lung transplantation in people with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs), including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a study reports. While a lung transplant is considered an effective treatment for ILDs, these findings “suggest that caution is required during decision-making,…
For many years, my relationship to the rare disease community was that I had stepsiblings with ataxia, a neurological condition without a cure or effective therapy. Little did I know I’d one day have my own rare disease. In January 2017, I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary…
Sweden-based Vicore Pharma has granted exclusive rights to pharmaceutical company Nippon Shinyaku to develop and commercialize its treatment candidate C21 (VP01) in Japan, with an initial focus on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Nippon will be operationally and financially responsible for the development of C21 in Japan, where…
