Through Cure SMA’s partnership with NeurologyLive, a new patient-centered article, “Early Intervention in SMA: How Access to Therapy Will Alter Disease Management As We Know It,” is now available for viewing online.
This piece features an interview with Dr. Mary Schroth, Chief Medical Officer at Cure SMA, and discusses successes in newborn screening for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) throughout the United States, available therapies for SMA, and how early intervention and action are changing the course of SMA.
The importance of early diagnosis and early treatment cannot be overstated and, as the article points out, the phenotype of SMA is changing in real-time. The evolving phenotype also requires changes in clinical care practices for SMA, with access to multidisciplinary care still the key component to achieving optimal outcomes for SMA.
Since this article was published, even more progress has been made in newborn screening. Washington State has added SMA to their newborn screening panel, bringing the total number of U.S. states to 32, which equates to nearly 70% of all infants being screened for SMA at birth. Newborn screening allows for pre-symptomatic identification and treatment of infants with SMA.
To learn more about newborn screening in your state, see Cure SMA’s newly updated state fact sheets.