The National Institutes of Health has created a new research program that is devoting itself to studying patients with mystery diseases. The Undiagnosed Diseases Program will start to accept cases at their Bethesda center in July, taking patients whose disease confounds physicians. William Gahl, an expert on rare genetic diseases [1] and the clinical director at the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute, will be in charge.

"The history of biomedical research has taught us that careful study of baffling cases can provide new insights into the mechanisms of disease--both rare and common," says NIH director Elias Zerhouni (photo [2]).

- read the report [3] from AFP

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