A recent blog posting from the NRS has mentioned that this month the National Rosacea Society is 20 years old.
NRS Celebrates 20 Years
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The National Rosacea Society (NRS) marks its 20th anniversary in 2012, and is pleased to report on the vast ongoing progress that has been made toward fulfilling its mission of improving the lives of people with rosacea through awareness, education and support of medical research.
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Since the cause of rosacea is unknown and there is no cure, in 2000 the NRS established a grants program dedicated to encouraging and supporting medical research toward advances in its treatment, management and potential prevention. Funded entirely by individual donations, the research grants program has awarded over $1 million to fund 51 studies to date, resulting in substantial improvements in the understanding and potentially more effective treatment of the disorder.
To provide a foundation for meaningful scientific investigation, the NRS organized a consensus committee and review panel of 21 medical experts to establish a standard definition and classification system for rosacea, which was published in 2002. This was followed by a standard grading system, published in 2004, and standard management options, published in 2009.
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Today the NRS provides educational services to more than 1 million rosacea patients each year, while the NRS Web site, rosacea.org, serves as the leading resource for information about rosacea on the Internet. Meanwhile, the NRS has continued its extensive public awareness program at no cost to the public, thanks to the generous support of an increasing number of companies committed to rosacea, reaching a total audience of more than 400 million people annually.
Metrogel was Once an Orphan Drug
One of interesting notes in the blog posting was that the first product that was developed specifically for rosacea, started life as an orphan drug.
Typically drugs are only granted orphan status if they affect a small portion of the population. The designation is designed to allow the fast tracking of drugs that might otherwise prove uneconomical due to the large cost of development, and small potential market once approved.
This of course seems very strange for rosacea sufferers who know well that Rosacea is in fact now considered a quite common condition.
Back in 1992 it was thought that rosacea affected less than 200,000 Americans. The NRS estimate is now more than 16 million Americans.
Curatek Pharmaceuticals was the company who developed Metrogel in 1988 as a treatment for rosacea, and was bought by Galderma in 1993.
