New Hampshire Advocacy Group Set to Shine Light on PANS and PANDAS
The Alex Manfull Fund urges the public to join them as they cross Portsmouth's Memorial Bridge to raise awareness about PANS and PANDAS on Oct. 9, 2025
Portsmouth's Memorial Bridge is bathed in green light to draw visibility to World PANS/PANDAS Awareness Day.
Portsmouth Memorial Bridge designated for illumination and public walk
This is a crisis situation that warrants urgent attention.”
PORTSMOUTH, NH, UNITED STATES, October 6, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Alex Manfull Fund, a Portsmouth-based nonprofit, is joining a global effort on Oct. 9–World PANS/PANDAS Awareness Day–to draw critical attention to debilitating neuroimmune disorders that strike young people after common infections like strep throat and the flu.— Susan Manfull, Executive Director of The Alex Manfull Fund
Portsmouth’s Memorial Bridge, along with hundreds of landmarks around the world, will be bathed in green light to raise awareness of this little-known group of medical disorders with unusual acronyms that belie their horrific qualities.
Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections (PANDAS) are devastating neuroimmune disorders that affect young people following bacterial and viral infections. Symptoms include the sudden onset of obsessions and compulsions, severely restricted food intake, and motor or vocal tics, as well as anxiety, sleep disturbances, sensory issues, academic deterioration, rage, and suicidal ideation, among others.
“Our daughter Alexandra ‘Alex’ Manfull, who was born and raised in Portsmouth, died completely unexpectedly at 26 years old from complications due to PANDAS/PANS,” Susan Manfull, Executive Director of The Alex Manfull Fund, recently wrote in Seacoastonline. “Greater public awareness and physician education would have prevented Alex’s death.”
Alex Manfull Fund, created in honor of Alex’s legacy, is guided by the vision that no other young people’s lives be lost or derailed by PANDAS or PANS. While the fund has made good progress, Manfull says, lives are being derailed and even destroyed by a treatable illness: “This is a crisis situation that warrants urgent attention.”
Members of the public are invited to convene on Thursday, October 9, at 5:30 pm at Thaxter Hall in St. John’s Church (101 Chapel St., Portsmouth) to learn more about PANDAS/PANS and the work of The Alex Manfull Fund. The group will walk across the bridge together at 6:30 pm.
The Canada-based Inflamed Brain Alliance is behind the global Light Up 4 PANS initiative, which encompasses advocacy organizations from eight countries, including Canada, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, the US and the UK. Some 220 landmarks are slated for illumination on October 9, including 48 in 22 states across the US.
The Light Up 4 PANS initiative builds on Governor Kelly Ayotte’s designation of October 9 as PANDAS/PANS Awareness Day and a recent TAMF grant award to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Health for an innovative program named The Alex Manfull Neuroimmune Psychiatry Program Fund.
Angie Gentile
The Alex Manfull Fund
+1 571-243-0972
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