The FMF Division
Sheba | The FMF Division
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Director: Prof. Avi Livne 
Prof. Avi Livneh, born in 1948, graduated from the Sackler School of Medicine at the Tel Aviv University in 1973. From 1985 1988 he worked as a Fellow in Rheumatology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Prof. Livneh is an Associate Professor of Medicine since 1998 and has been the head of Department F Medicine since 2001. Most of his research work concerns autoantibodies against a diversity of antigens. He acquired his knowledge in basic research in the Weizmann Institute of Science and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In the last six years his main avenue of basic research is in Amyloidosis and genetic aspects of FMF. |
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Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) is a genetic disease affecting Jews of all ethnic backgrounds, but particularly those of North African and Iraqi extraction. The rate of carriers of the defective gene (having one mutation) is unbelievably high, ranging from 1 out of 4 individuals in non-Ashkenazi Jews, to 1 out of 15 in the Ashkenazi population. According to this prevalence and validated by population screens, the population of genetically affected (bearing 2 mutations) individuals is around 50,000. Yet, only 10,000 individuals with a clinically overt disease are known.
The FMF Institute has been serving the FMF population since the 1950s and is recognized worldwide for its tremendous contribution to the study of the disease. The Institute has a registry of over 8,000 patients (out of a potential population of 10,000 patients) and is recognized as the National Center of FMF. There are an estimated 40,000 FMF patients who are genetically positive but have not been screened.
The FMF Institute has its own patients association with a mission to fundraise, improve FMF status in governmental facilities and educate patients' families and physicians about the disease.
The Institute has its own laboratory facilities for genetic diagnosis of FMF and other periodic fever diseases (HIDS, TRAPS, FCIU, MWS, CINCA), and genetic and proteinaceous diagnosis of Amyloidosis.
FMF is one of the most frequent genetic diseases in Israel. In 1997, a team of researchers and physicians from Heller Institute cloned the gene responsible for one of the most frequent genetic diseases in Israel - Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF). This discovery is considered an international breakthrough in the understanding of this severe disease and its treatment modalities.
