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Review
. 2022 Apr 19;10(5):940.
doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10050940.

Neurofibromatosis: New Clinical Challenges in the Era of COVID-19

Alessio Ardizzone  1 , Anna Paola Capra  1 , Michela Campolo  1 , Alessia Filippone  1 , Emanuela Esposito  1 , Silvana Briuglia  2
Affiliations
Review

Neurofibromatosis: New Clinical Challenges in the Era of COVID-19

Alessio Ardizzone et al. Biomedicines. .

Abstract

Rare diseases constitute a wide range of disorders thus defined for their low prevalence. However, taken together, rare diseases impact a considerable percentage of the world population, thus representing a public healthcare problem. In particular, neurofibromatoses are autosomal-dominant genetic disorders that include type 1 neurofibromatosis (NF1), type 2 neurofibromatosis (NF2) and schwannomatosis. Each of the three types is a genetically distinct disease with an unpredictable clinical course and for which there is still no resolutive cure. Therefore, a personalized therapeutic approach directed at improving the symptomatology as well as the search for new pharmacological strategies for the management of neurofibromatosis represents a priority for positive outcomes for affected patients. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has severely affected health systems around the world, impacting the provision of medical care and modifying clinical surveillance along with scientific research procedures. COVID-19 significantly worsened exchanges between healthcare personnel and neurofibromatosis patients, precluding continuous clinical monitoring in specialized clinic centers. In this new scenario, our article presents, for the first time, a comprehensive literature review on the clinical challenges for neurofibromatosis clinical care and research during the COVID-19 pandemic health emergency. The review was performed through PubMed (Medline) and Google Scholar databases until December 2021.

Keywords: COVID-19; Telemedicine; clinical care; neurofibromatosis; personalized medicine; pharmacogenetics; rare diseases; telehealth.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Neurofibromatoses. The figure schematizes and summarizes the main clinical and genetic characteristics of NF1, NF2 and schwannomatosis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Clinical course of NFs patients. The figure illustrates the clinical path of NFs patients, also summarizing the specialist subdivision of the clinical centers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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