A team of bike riders dubbed APBD Tour De Friends will ride Saturday, May 7 in the third annual Million Dollar Bike Ride to raise awareness of and funds for research into Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease.
A team of bike riders dubbed APBD Tour De Friends will ride Saturday, May 7 in the third annual Million Dollar Bike Ride to raise awareness of and funds for research into Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease.
Known as APBD, the disease has been diagnosed mainly in Ashkenazi Jews, with symptoms appearing between the ages of 30 and 60.
The disease impacts the neurological system, and those with the condition may lose the ability to stand and walk, as sensation diminishes in the feet and legs and muscle weakness and stiffness progresses. Bladder dysfunction, diminished energy and cognitive losses are other common symptoms.
Former Philadelphia resident Harriet Saxe, who now lives in Portland, Ore., will captain the APBD Tour de Friends team. Her husband, Chuck, is an APBD patient, as were several other of his family members.
The Million Dollar Bike Ride is organized by the Orphan Disease Center at Penn Medicine. It has raised more than $2 million to date.
“Orphan diseases represent a collection of disorders that afflict less than 200,000 individuals for any single disease type. Despite their rarity in the population, there are more than 7,000 distinct orphan diseases,” according to a news release from Penn Medicine. “In all, over 25 million people in the United States suffer from complications associated with orphan diseases; thousands die from them each year.”
The ride starts at 7:30 a.m. at Highline Park at 31st and Chestnut streets and ends there as well. More than 25 separate teams and 450 riders are participating, including Team NTSAD, which is riding to combat Tay-Sachs disease, Sandhoff disease and GM1.
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