ADVANCED FSHD-COM: New Clinical Outcome Measures to Evaluate Non-ambulant FSHD Patients, a Pilot Study

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Validation of new COMs for non ambulant FSHD patients: Monitoring of commonly used and news COMs in non ambulant patients with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy

Study summary

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is one of the most common adult muscular dystrophy with an estimated prevalence range of 2-7 per 100,000. The disease is characterized by slowly progressive, asymmetric muscle weakness that starts with the face and scapular muscles. It causes significant lifetime morbidity, with up to 20% of patients eventually requiring full-time wheelchair use. However, there is a large degree of clinical variability in both disease progression and severity. This makes predicting an individual's disease course difficult and has made clinical trial design challenging.

The disease is caused by the aberrant expression of a normally silenced gene, DUX4, which causes disease by a toxic gain-of-function. The establishment of a unifying model for the cause of FSHD made it possible to develop disease-specific targeted treatments. Pharmaceutical companies are actively investigating therapeutic approaches in order to knockdown or silence DUX4, including the use of antisense RNA oligonucleotides which is already investigated for spinal muscular atrophy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and myotonic dystrophy. The drug development pipeline for FSHD over the next 5 years looks promising but meetings with industry, advocacy groups, and FSHD scientific experts have identified several gaps that need to be addressed to accelerate efficient drug development. As drugs move from preclinical testing into human trials, it is essential to validate clinical trial tools and methodologies to facilitate drug development. There is a strong need for clinical outcome measures (COMs) including biomarkers, strength outcomes, functional measures and patient reported outcomes to follow disease progression and to evaluate treatment efficacy.

A large international multicenter study is currently ongoing in order to validate COMs in ambulant FSHD patients (ReSolve, NCT03458832). Additionally, Nice University Hospital is conducting an ancillary study (CTRL FSHD France, NCT04038138) to evaluate muscle MRI, an additional emerging biomarker, to follow disease progression in the same patient population. To limit patient heterogeneity, only ambulant FSHD patients are included in these 2 ongoing studies. It is therefore important to generate data in severely affected non-ambulant FSHD patients, in order to validate COMs that are adapted to this specific subgroup of patients for future therapeutic trials.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Change of the Motor Function Measure-32 (MFM-32) from Baseline (T0) to 6 months (T6), 12 months (T12) and 24 months (M24) — at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months
  Within MFM-32, 32 terms will be evaluated to describe patient's motor functions and grouped into 3 sub-scores at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months: D1: standing position and transfer D2: axial and proximal motor function D3: distal motor function The MFM-32 ratings rely on the use of a 4-point Likert scale based on the subject's maximal abilities without assistance (0: cannot initiate the task or maintain the starting position; 1: performs the task partially; 2: performs the task incompletely or imperfectly; 3: performs the task fully and normally.)
• Change of the Manual Muscle Testing (MMT) from Baseline (T0) to 6 months (T6), 12 months (T12) and 24 months (M24) — at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months
  The Manual Muscle Testing is a modified Medical Research Council 13-point and is used with standardized positions for each grade and each muscle following the recommendations of the FSH-DY Group. Shoulder abduction and flexion, elbow flexion and extension, wrist flexion and extension, fingers flexion and extension, hip flexion and abd/adduction, knee flexion and extension, ankle plantarflexion and dorsiflexion strength will be measured bilaterally
• Change of the Hand-Held dynamometry (HHD) from Baseline (T0) to 6 months (T6), 12 months (T12) and 24 months (M24) — at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months
  Hand-Held dynamometry (HHD) assess the isometric muscle strength in both the upper and lower limbs bilaterally (global shoulder abduction and flexion, elbow flexion and extension, hip abduction, knee extension, ankle dorsiflexion isometric strength). The required equipment is a calibrated hand-held dynamometer (MicroFet). The patient has to push against the hand-held dynamometer 3 times as hard as he can for 3-5 seconds. The maximal value will be kept for further analysis.
• Change of the Pinch and Grip test from Baseline (T0) to 6 months (T6), 12 months (T12) and 24 months (M24) — at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months
  The purpose of those tests is to measure the maximum isometric strength of the hand and forearm muscles when doing a grasping or a pinching action. The equipment required for the grip and the pinch tests is a calibrate dynamometer. The subject should be strongly encouraged to give a maximum effort. We record three trials for each hand, alternating hands with at least 30 seconds recovery between each effort. We keep the best result.

Trial sites (1)

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