All medical information that you provide to the study will remain completely confidential.

Be Assured that:

• All medical information that you provide to the study will remain completely confidential.
• We always ask for your permission.
• We will never share any of your information.

Certificate of Confidentiality

The study has a Certificate of Confidentiality agreement with the National Institutes of Health. With this high level of protection even lawsuits cannot force us to release any of your information.

Privacy Protection

Because we take confidentiality issues seriously, we have implemented several procedures to protect your privacy:

• All data in our computers is password protected and only accessible to study personnel.
• The data is stored in encrypted format.
• Specimens are stripped of personal identifiers and coded with unique numbers that cannot be traced back to you.

IRB

The study is approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and all collaborating institutions.

The Institutional Review Board is the administrative body of an institution that oversees the conduct of research involving human subjects to assure compliance with institutional and government regulations.