Welcome to the home page of Pitt Hopkins UK.
You have found us because you want to find out more about Pitt Hopkins Syndrome in the UK. You probably know that Pitt Hopkins Syndrome is a very rare syndrome. It can in fact be called an ultra orphan disease. This is because there are possibly only 1 in 200,000 to 300,000 cases of PTHS in the world. That’s something like 4 in a million!
In September 2013 the members of the Pitt Hopkins UK fundraising group knew of 33 cases of PTHS in the UK .In September 2014 we were in contact with at least 40. At our PTHS UK Day in July '14 we heard that there were about 200 diagnosed people in the UK. This meant we had contact with about 1 in 5 of all cases already diagnosed in the UK. In June 2015 we had contact with over 60 families and in June 2016 we have contact with about 70. Some of these new families came from the DDD study. We know there are many more families out there both diagnosed and undiagnosed. We hope to find them. If you are one of them please contact us.
The families in PTHS UK met through the International Google online Support group started by two parents , one from the US in North Carolina and one British from London (presently living in the Netherlands) We continue to find each other through the Google Group, Facebook, Rareconnect and the International and UK websites. We are a relatively small group of parents in the world but we are getting larger. There are now individual online support groups in Dutch , Italian, Swedish, Spanish, French and for families in New Zealand and Australia, Canada and the UK. The biggest groups remain the international Google support group and parents' Facebook groups. There are many in the groups whose first language is not English. The RareConnect group connects families in English, French, Italian, Spanish and recently Portuguese and Russian.
We are all learning about Pitt Hopkins Syndrome together!
Between 1978, when the first people with Pitt Hopkins Syndrome were diagnosed and 2007 when the blood test was developed, only 7 cases were clinically diagnosed. 9 years later in 2016 we know of, or have contact with, well over 500 families around the world but it is impossible to know how many other diagnosed people there are and also, of course, those yet to be diagnosed! However it is estimated that there are at least 1500 diagnosed cases in Europe alone. We hope with all our efforts to raise awareness of Pitt Hopkins Syndrome that we will find many more soon.