Argenx podcast series focused on a rare disease draws wide audience amid plans for second season

It turns out that maybe rare isn’t so rare when it comes to pod­casts.

Ar­genx says its myas­the­nia gravis-fo­cused pod­cast cur­rent­ly ranks in the top 5% of all pod­cast down­loads as of Oc­to­ber — and not on­ly among health-re­lat­ed ones — across iHeartRa­dio, Spo­ti­fy and Ap­ple chan­nels.

The six-episode se­ries that launched this sum­mer with pro­fes­sion­al chefs, en­tre­pre­neurs, par­ents and col­lege stu­dents talk­ing about nav­i­gat­ing life with the au­toim­mune con­di­tion that caus­es vol­un­tary mus­cle weak­ness, has notched around 100,000 down­loads to date, the com­pa­ny said. While track­ing ex­act­ly who is do­ing the down­load­ing is dif­fi­cult, ar­genx be­lieves it’s reach­ing new pa­tients and peo­ple in gen­er­al who are in­ter­est­ed in the sto­ries. About 70,000 peo­ple in the US have been di­ag­nosed with MG, ac­cord­ing to the Myas­the­nia Gravis Foun­da­tion.

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