Elixia sat down with nephrologist Dr. Arvind Madan to discuss the vital role of clinical trials in advancing kidney disease research.
Meet Dr. Madan
My name is Arvind Madan and I am a practicing nephrologist in central Florida. My training takes me back to India for medical school, and after graduating from there I moved to the United States and I did my residency in Internal Medicine in Nassau County, Long Island. I did a Nephrology Fellowship at upstate SUNY Syracuse. And once I finished, I moved to Florida and I joined this group in 2001.
And this is one of the, you know, the premier groups. And we offer a full spectrum of clinical nephrology to our patients, now including clinical trials.
Most Memorable Clinical Trial Story
I think in my mind, the greatest impact that I have seen has happened in the rare disease arena for nephrology. And I noticed that one of my patients in the most recent clinical trials, they had given up on every therapy that they had tried: the side effects were too bad, or the medications were too expensive or the patient could not tolerate what was out there.
So, we put them in our recent clinical trial, and the patient has done dramatically well within three months. But this patient had decline in the kidney function of about 25% in three months, and he’s regained most of that back, just with one clinical trial. And in the beginning, the patient was a little skeptical about doing a clinical trial, but since then… since they have seen the improvement, now they are sold on it. And they actually have now identified other patients in their family who have the same problem.
Clinical Trials Bring Us All Together
The research has brought us all together. We have become more patient centric and everybody is very thankful that we have this to offer to our patients. We may have a difference with a partner, but patient care supersedes all that. And research has brought us together and made us better physicians in offering better patient care.
Partnership With Elixia
We have a large patient volume in our clinics and Elixia has great experience in managing high volume trials and rare disease trials. So, the collaboration has been very fruitful for both Elixia and our practice, but more importantly for the patients.
