IHRF Establishes Donor Program with NDRI
February 20, 2007— The Intracranial Hypertension Research Foundation (IHRF) recently signed an agreement with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI), a NIH-funded national donor tissue procurement and distribution organization, to establish the first donor tissue program for chronic intracranial hypertension (IH). One of the main reasons for the slow progress of chronic intracranial hypertension research has been a lack of human tissue to study. In fact, no researcher has examined brain tissue of critical cerebrospinal drainage areas from a patient with idiopathic IH in over 125 years.
Donated brain tissue can show physiological changes that may occur over time in the brain of a chronic IH patient. And it could help researchers understand precisely what goes wrong with the process of CSF exiting from the brain that ultimately leads to intracranial hypertension.
NDRI maintains the largest database in the world of scientists from top universities and research centers who need human tissues and organs for their research. Since its establishment 20 years ago, the non-profit NDRI has distributed more than 180,000 tissue specimens to researchers.
This partnership also represents the first time that actual research on donated tissues will be correlated with the donor’s clinical medical history (stored in the IH Registry database). This information is only supplied by prior authorization; all medical information is de-identified so a researcher never knows the identity of a donor.
Additionally, IHRF will be working with NDRI to recruit researchers who are interested in receiving these donated tissues.
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