Help 4 Hd Live!

Our special guest tonight is Dr. LaVonne Goodman, a “mostly retired” internist and patient advocate who decided to help a Seattle clinic recruit patients with Huntington’s Disease (HD) and was wildly successfully at it. Her secret, she says, is having a personal relationship with many, many patients. Her husband died of HD at age 36. Since then she has seen HD patients and led support groups, building relationships as a friend to families dealing with HD. She has kept a close watch on the clinical studies field, but all studies were observational in nature and not designed to alter the course of their disease or symptoms. Then in 2010, she heard that the first compound designed for motor improvement in HD patients was entering phase II trials. After realizing the Seattle area was not involved, she pressed the Huntington’s Study Group who connected her with a Colorado physician who had just joined Evergreen Neuroscience Institute in Seattle. The two decided to work together on the trial with Goodman handling r