Clinical trials

This repository will establish for the first time a system to carefully assess and monitor over time the general health and the amount of cholesterol in the arteries of U.S. children and adults with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (hoFH). Patients with this very rare disorder have very high blood levels of cholesterol from birth due to the inheritance of an abnormal gene from each parent. As a result, if untreated, heart attacks and sudden death occur in childhood. Treatments such as LDL-apheresis and liver transplant will lower the cholesterol level, but the best treatment and the best way to monitor the effect of the treatment on the arteries are unknown. The collection of clinical data and blood for analysis of known and yet-to-be discovered markers and predictors of arterial disease will yield new information about the natural history of the disorder and response to treatment. The repository will greatly aid the development of specific protocols that seek to learn more about this disease and new therapies.

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is the most common inherited kidney disease, affecting more than 400,000 people in the U.S. and 5 million people worldwide. PKD is the 4th most common cause of kidney failure requiring dialysis and/or transplantation. Over half of all PKD patients develop kidney failure by age 60 years, although age of onset of kidney disease varies widely, even among members of the same family. Despite the fact this is a relatively common problem, relatively few patients have been studied for a sufficient period of time to fully understand how patients are affected over the course of their lifetime. The reason for creating this repository is to collect information about PKD so that the investigators may fully understand its complications, including high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. This information may also aid in the development of improved treatment strategies.

A central goal of this data repository is to collect data from a large population of subjects with a variety of renal disease states. Cohorts will include subjects with diabetes, inflammatory/autoimmune and transplant related renal conditions. Additionally, the repository will have the capacity to store biospecimens and electronic data in control subjects without established renal disease. This initiative will provide an opportunity to compare data from various disease states and controls with the objective of determining clinical and biological factors that predict disease progression, response to therapy and identify discriminating noninvasive clinical and biological features that predict renal biopsy findings.