Advocacy starts with patients and caregivers. It’s the husband who asks the nurse, “Could the lightheadedness mean something more?” It’s the daughter who brings journal articles to her mother’s doctor. It’s the patient who, despite fatigue, shares their story again and again so that the next person might be diagnosed sooner.

Specialists in Scandinavia have updated the Kumamoto scale, a tool long used to monitor the progression of hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTRv), a group of diseases that includes familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP). The revised scale introduces clearer definitions and more precise scoring for symptoms and organ involvement, while still being practical…

People with early-stage familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP) cost society more than twice as much as symptom-free carriers of disease-causing genetic mutations, largely due to higher medical needs and lost productivity at work, according to a study in Spain. “Not only early-stage [FAP] patients, but also asymptomatic carriers, are generating…

In my work as an advocate for the New Zealand Amyloidosis Patients Association (NZAPA), I meet many people with ATTR amyloidosis and their caregivers. I still recall the first diagnosed patient who reached out to me after the charity was established in 2020. We’d just launched NZAPA’s Facebook…

Early genetic screening for people with unexplained nerve damage, or neuropathy, may help uncover undiagnosed cases of familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP), allowing faster access to treatment. In a study from France, 1% of 400 adults with neuropathy of unknown origin were found to have a FAP-causing mutation, even…