a natural history study of canavan disease

Conditions: Canavan Disease

Summary: the purpose of this study is to learn more about the natural history of canavan disease

for this study, families of subjects will fill out a canavan patient survey which asks questions about disease development, symptoms and progression. patients will be seen in dr. eichler's leukodystrophy clinic for standard of care appointments. these appointments will be scheduled every 6 months. the investigators will also collect mri images and reports that have already been done or which will be done during participation in the study on a clinical basis. global unique identifiers (guid): a patient global unique identifier (guid) will be used as the identifier for individuals participating in the study in neurobank™. the guid is an 11-character string that is generated using encryption technology and algorithms licensed by the ncri from the national institutes of health (nih). the guid is generated on a secure website that utilizes 128-bit secure socket layer (ssl). of note, this website is not linked to neurobank™. the guid is generated using an irreversible encryption algorithm - it accepts twelve identifying data elements, (e.g. last name at birth, first name at birth, gender at birth, day, month and year of birth, city and country of birth, etc.), and produces a unique random-generated character string, or guid. no identifying information is stored in the system; it is simply used to generate the guid. if the same information is entered again, the same guid will be returned. the guid is entered into neurobank™ when the patient is being created in the system. as the same patient may participate in multiple studies, neurobank™ will also allow capturing a study-specific id for the patient. for more information about neurobank™ or the guid, please go to: www.neurobank.org. data management: the ncri data management team is trained and knowledgeable regarding confidentiality and integrity of data. they will be responsible for all aspects of data procedures. alex sherman is the ald connect network strategist and member of the neals als consortium. he is the director of strategic development and systems of ncri, serves on the executive committee of the als research group, and is one of the leaders of the neals als consortium. data quality checks, logic checks and queries: the data manager (dm) at the neurological clinical research institute (ncri) at the massachusetts general hospital will conduct monthly data quality checks, logic checks, and internal data quality audits. data field queries will be resolved in an established workflow according to the standard operating procedures (sops). the queries may be created either at the point of entry during the data entry process, manually by the ncri dm, or as the result of executing monthly logic checks. study-specific database backup and maintenance: the ncri personnel will be responsible for the database backups that will be conducted daily. simultaneously, a separate copy of the backup in the encrypted compressed format will be maintained and saved by the system analysts. the backups will be saved on a separate computer partition in a password-protected compressed format and also will be burnt into dvd medium and stored in a secure location.

Eligibility criteria:
inclusion criteria: * the patient must have a confirmed diagnosis of canavan disease as defined by elevated naa levels, decreased aspa activity, or mutations in the aspa gene. exclusion criteria: * the pi will assess whether it is in the best interest of the patient to exclude them from the study for their own comfort and well being. in cases where the pi deems it appropriate, severely affected patients will be excluded