Imagine what we can do together!
Better Treatments and a Cure Starts with You!
The Cystinosis Research Foundation has partnered with CoRDS (Coordination of Rare Diseases at Sanford) to create the only international cystinosis patient registry in the world. CoRDS supports and enables rare disease communities to build robust registries to help accelerate research. Enrolling in the cystinosis patient registry is one of the most effective ways to help support research and advance clinical treatments for those living with cystinosis.
CCIR is an online, confidential database of standardized information about individuals with cystinosis. By sharing your diagnostic and treatment history, you can help provide researchers with the data necessary to conduct informed research and clinical trials which ultimately will lead to improved treatment options and outcomes for patients.
The comprehensive questionnaire contains 135 questions about cystinosis that include questions about diagnosis and treatment, as well as all areas affected by cystinosis including the eyes, kidneys, muscles, bones, and neurological complications. Designing the questionnaire was a collaborative effort by leaders in the cystinosis community including researchers, clinicians, adults with cystinosis, and parents of children with cystinosis. View our CCIR Collaborators. Download the CCIR flyer.
Our goal is 100% participation by our international cystinosis community. The sooner we reach our goal, the more useful our data will be for researchers working around the world to find better treatments and a cure for cystinosis.
Getting Started
If you would like to enroll yourself or your dependent in the CCIR please follow the simple steps outlined below to complete the CoRDS General Patient Registry Questionnaire and the Cystinosis-specific Questionnaire.
Step 1
CoRDS Patient Registry Questionnaire
Download the CoRDS Patient Registry Questionnaire below. The file is a downloadable and fillable PDF file. The form collects general information and can be completed in about 5-10 minutes. Complete and save the form and email it as an attachment to cords@sanfordhealth.org.
Alternatively, you may also complete the registration via regular mail by printing the form. You can call CoRDS at (877) 658-9192 or send an email to cords@sanfordhealth.org to request a paper version of the CoRDS Patient Registry Questionnaire. A completed paper version can be sent to:
Sanford Research
2301 East 60th Street North
Sioux Falls, South Dakota 57104
Step 2
Cystinosis Questionnaire
Download and complete the Cystinosis Questionnaire. Similar to the general CoRDS Patient Registry Questionnaire above, this form is also a downloadable and fillable form. The questionnaire asks specific questions related to cystinosis and will take about 45 minutes to complete. The completed form can also be saved and submitted to CoRDS via email (cords@sanfordhealth.org) or regular mail as detailed above.
You should plan to update your questionnaire at least every year and after any significant changes to health.
On behalf of the Cystinosis Research Foundation, thank you for taking the time to complete the questionnaire and for making an important contribution to cystinosis research!
FAQs
Our registry is a program for collection, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of clearly defined information about cystinosis. Data collected in this registry includes diagnosis and treatment, management of care, quality of life and longitudinal information for cystinosis.
In one word, PROGRESS. Having a registry specifically for individuals with cystinosis allows approved researchers to have easy access to useful medical data on many individuals with cystinosis. Since we will have already collected this data and obtained your consent to share it, researchers can begin to develop better studies much more quickly, and more easily find participants for these studies.
Everyone with cystinosis! Participating in the Registry at CoRDS is a great way for participants to take part in helping to identify the specific causes, symptoms, and treatments of cystinosis.
Internet polls, questionnaires, and surveys are often used to collect information quickly and easily from respondents. However, to publish their results, researchers must only use information obtained in a specific way. The patient data they use must have written approval from patients to use their data this way and must adhere to strict privacy regulations. The registry is compliant with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). CoRDS has worked hard to ensure that researchers can use the information you provide.
CoRDS submits every questionnaire to their Institutional Review Board approval. The IRB is a group that reviews the ethics of medical research studies.
Informed consent also safeguards participant data. When registering to participate in CoRDS, participants (or their representatives) are given a chance to read the consent documentation before filling out the questionnaire. For any questions, participants can call CoRDS at + 1 877 658 9192 or send an email to cords@sanfordhealth.org.
If researchers receive approval to look at the registry or questionnaire responses, they will be given only the anonymous data without the identifiable information. The Cystinosis Research Foundation can only access your identifiable information if you choose to share it with us when you complete your registry questionnaire.
Your privacy is also protected even if you indicate that you are willing to be contacted for additional research. For example, a researcher might contact CoRDS to ask for additional information from all participants who have a specific symptom, such as muscle weakness. CoRDs would then contact every participant in the registry who said that they had muscle weakness and that they would like to participate in additional studies. CoRDS would then provide these people with the researcher’s contact information, and it would be up to the individual participants to contact the researcher to participate in additional research. CoRDS will never provide your contact information to anyone.
Updates can be done any time and should only take 10-15 minutes. But updates should be done at least every year, after any significant change in the participant’s health, and immediately after their 18th birthday. If the participant was enrolled in the registry as a minor, their data becomes inaccessible 30 days after their 18th birthday unless and until they are re-enrolled.
Researchers will be able to compare your answers with those of others. The researchers will then be able to detect patterns, identify common symptoms and gain insights into effective and ineffective treatments. Your answers will provide a better overall understanding of cystinosis and how the disease develops/progresses over the course of a lifetime.
Our goal is to collect and provide valuable information and to speed up research studies of cystinosis and help start clinical trials for treatments.
The information you provide to this registry can help to:
- Drive research towards better treatments and possibly a cure
- Allow healthcare professionals and researchers to learn more about the disease
- Create a strong patient and research community
- Enhance treatment guidelines for patients to improve quality and management of care
Yes, the registry can be accessed all over the world with the link provided on our website. International participation is highly encouraged.
The information you provide will be provided to researchers studying cystinosis. CoRDS has put many safeguards into place to ensure that this information will be kept safe and confidential. The registry is compliant with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
