Orphan drug

A drug used to treat, prevent, or diagnose an orphan disease. An orphan disease is a rare disease or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. Orphan diseases are often serious or life threatening. In 1983, the U.S. government passed a law, called the Orphan Drug Act, to give drug companies certain financial benefits for developing orphan drugs that are safe and effective.

Explore Medical Terms

20000+ Medical & Health Terms for Doctors, students & patients from a medical dictionary. Our experts define difficult medical & health language in easy-to-understand explanations of each and every medical term.

Medical & Health Terms online medical dictionary provides quick & easy access to hard-to-spell and often misspelled medical & health definitions through an extensive alphabetical A-Z listing.