DALLAS—DallasNovelty.com will be donating a portion of profits to the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressvia Association.
Dallas Novelty and IFOPA have teamed up for a fundraising campaign to help raise money and awareness for FOP. The owners of Dallas Novelty are proud to announce their new campaign to benefit research for the very rare muscular skeletal disease, Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.
This very rare disease only afflicts one in 2 million people worldwide with fewer than 400 patients diagnosed in the United States. There is no treatment for this disease other than pain management, but researchers have been making huge strides toward a cure in the past three years.
Currently a majority of research is being done by Dr Fred Kaplan and his associates at the University of Pennsylvania in Philladelphia. Kaplan and his team of researchers around the world have discovered the gene that mutates in the body to cause FOP and with the help of stem cells are very close to putting a stop to this very debilitating disease.
Dallas Novelty and IFOPA have teamed up to help raise money and awareness for FOP. Most of the research for FOP is privately funded along with small grants from the Bone and Joint Foundation that President George W Bush helped create to help in the research of diseases such as FOP. FOP has been around for hundreds of years and has been well documented back to some of the earliest scientific writings.
It has been called Stone Mans Disease because it literally builds a second skeleton on top of the original one. This causes joints to freeze in position and most patients die of the disease because of respiratory failure from not being able to move their lungs since the chest wall is calcified.
The main reason Dallas Novelty has taken this disease head on is the founder, Nick Mahler, is a FOP patient. Mahler's body has gradually been taken over by FOP and has restricted all movement in his joints except for his elbows and some wrist movement. A portion of all DallNovelty.com profits go to the research for FOP by the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressvia Association. For more information go to IFOPA.org.
