The Clubfoot Research Foundation is a new medical research non-profit organization. This non-profit is serving the largest patient group that is considered born with a disability, as 1-7 out of 1000 babies born are affected depending on the population. On a global scale that is quite a significant number of patients that need treatment per year and whom has received very little attention from genetic researchers.
Genetic studies have been limited to a few isolated cases where results could not be traced in other patients and cell biology, etiology studies have not been touched for a long time. Why? Mostly because the education about the condition in both medical school and in public was reduced to a statement that it is cured by the Ponseti treatment. This unfortunately is far from the whole truth about the disorder and patients, parents, doctors globally are hoping for a change.
You see, Clubfoot is called the 'come back kid' by doctors. The problem is treatable and great improvements are found in the appearance of the disability, but the problem often re-appears after a number of years, requiring more extensive surgical treatments that often end in poor long-term function and permanent disability. The great outcomes seem to be only applicable in the first 4 years of life, but the Clubfoot Research Foundation found many cases that never correct from the beginning or that relapse before the age of 2 years old in literature.
This condition also complicates other serious underlying conditions such as Spina Bifida, Arthrogryposis, Tethered Spinal Cord Syndrome and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and many more neurological in nature disorders.
Is it possible that the solution to the other 311 Co-Morbid conditions discovered by the Clubfoot Research Foundation can be improved or solved if this problem is addressed with genetic or stem cell research and solutions? Is it possible that it might play a larger role in these other co-morbidities?
Our goal is to fund genetic research that aims to find the specific genes involved for each case or any other research that will make a significant increase in the knowledge about this disorder and its numerous co-morbidities!