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National Rare Disease Day is celebrated on February 29, and this year, Hopkins is hoping that the date raises awareness for the struggle faced by their family members.

At the age of 2, Erica and Philip Barnes' daughter, Chloe, was diagnosed with metachromatic leukodystrophy. Also known as MLD, the disease is an uncommon, degenerative genetic disorder that harms the central nervous system, and ultimately results into paralysis and death.

Chloe, at 2, still struggled to walk. Her parents felt the instinct that she was in pain when she started getting up a number of times every night.

Diabetic people are vulnerable to blurred vision or even a vision loss from a condition known as macular edema. Three drugs for the disease- Avastin, Eylea and Lucentis- differ vastly in price, but a latest research suggests that all of them function equally well for patients suffering from mild vision loss.

But, when diabetic macular edema results into more severe vision loss, researchers discovered Eylea to be a better choice.

In an institute news release, lead author Dr. John Wells said that the study, funded by the US National Eye Institute (NEI), is going to aid doctors and their patients with diabetic macular edema in selecting the most appropriate therapy.

A new ‘black box warning’ label has been made mandatory for Essure by the US Food and Drug Administration. Essure is an implantable permanent contraceptive device.

According to the FDA website, a black box warning in products’ labeling has been planned to call attention to severe and life-threatening risks.

The FDA has made an announcement on Monday after it received grievances from over 5,000 women between November 2002 and May 2015. The women complained of unplanned pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths and severe pain and bleeding post an Essure implantation.

A seven-month-old boy from Alaska had almost lost his life to heart failure when he received his life back soon, thanks to a last-minute transplant that reached well in time. Lincoln Seay was waiting for five months for heart transplant and suffered cardiac arrest.

On July 14, baby Lincoln Seay took birth with a severe defect, due to which his heart was on the wrong side of his body. He waited for months for a heart transplant, and minutes before its arrival at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, Lincoln lost life.

Mindy Seay, Lincoln's mother, said on her YouCaring page, “He died. He was out of time. While they were prepping him for surgery, he coded. His heart stopped. They did CPR and chest compressions without success”.

A French Polynesia study has linked deadly Zika virus to Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a rare but serious autoimmune disorder. Study researchers claim they have the strongest evidence till date to prove the link.

For the study published in the journal The Lancet, researchers took blood samples from 42 individuals who had GBS during the Zika virus outbreak in French Polynesia. These people with GBS were between ages 36 and 56. Approximately 90% participants were with recent Zika virus infection symptoms, said the researchers.

A new research has revealed that a particular subtype of HER2-positive breast cancer tumor has displayed strong immune response to a single dose of the trastuzumab drug. The immune response was calculated by the researchers at Case Western University when they measured the immune activity within tumor tissue subsequent to giving the first dose of the drug.

When given a single dose of chemotherapy, no immune activity occurred in the HER2-positive patients. This reveals that the response of immune system to the drug is related to the particular substance and the tumor as well.