Patient Experience - Spruce Biosciences, Inc.

At Spruce, patients are at the center of everything we do. Individual experiences and stories motivate us to continue innovating and striving toward delivering well-tolerated and effective treatments to address the needs of people living with rare endocrine disorders like CAH. Spruce is developing a potentially novel treatment approach to address the difficult physical and mental hurdles patients undergo each and every day, some of which are shown below. We aim to overcome the demonstrated medical need for a classic CAH treatment that manages the disease without harmful side effects.

Endocrinologist Quote

High doses of steroids can cause serious complications over a lifetime. Patients should understand that over-medication or improper balance of steroids is a real problem. Some of the physical symptoms do not appear for a long time.”
—endocrinologist

Patient Stories

I remember growing up as a kid, I wished there was something that could have reduced the amount of steroids I was taking and reduced the side effects. I was overweight from the moment I can remember. And that caused pre-diabetes and caused a psychosocial impact. So to be able to prevent that earlier on, I think that would have been really impactful.

I wish there was more of a standard of care. It seems like with CAH the treatment is different for everybody. It feels like a guessing game.

My daughter was born on a Saturday. By that following Friday, we were starting the cortisol replacement steroids.

As my daughter with CAH gets older, it's hard as a parent to let go and trust that she’ll get the care she needs.

I was on steroids for 30 years, which gave me osteoporosis osteopenia. My skin was so fragile, it would just bleed or bruise at anything. I recently switched steroids. But on the new treatment, I developed edema and lymphedema.

It can be challenging because we’re so at risk. Susceptibility to infection is a huge risk that we should be aware of. But when I feel healthy, I am just to the moon with whatever I want to do, and I really think that people with CAH, when healthy, have the opportunity to make real change.