A bit of good news for a world direly in need of it.
Meet Khadijah Chaudhry.
Khadijah has Leber congenital amaurosis-4, a genetic condition which "causes cells in the retina to die off by the age of four." It is also associated with hyperopia, or extreme farsightedness.
With this condition, "the pupils, which usually expand and contract in response to the amount of light entering the eye, do not react normally to light" but rather "expand and contract more slowly than normal" or possibly not at all.
The young lady was diagnosed with the condition at the age of two. Her parents noticed her eyes moving "abnormally," and her vision "slowly deteriorating over time."
The family traveled to Evelina London Children's Hospital, a subsidiary of of St Thomas' Hospital in London, which is the only hospital in the world trying out a new gene therapy - a "keyhole eye surgery to inject healthy copies of a gene into sufferers' eyes."
In the surgery, Khadijah "had both her eyes injected with the pioneering treatment, in two separate procedures," each one totaling about one hour.
The lead surgeon's assessment of the surgery is encouraging:
We're really pleased with how Khadijah's surgeries went. Her mother and father have already noticed an improvement in her vision, which is very promising.
New medicine such as gene therapy, gene editing, and regenerative biotherapeutics are at the cutting edge of science, giving doctors new tools to help the body restore its own function.
If you want more on that, Dr. Jordan Peterson had a fascinating recent conversation with a doctor on the topic:
We'll update you if we see the outcome of this story. We're rooting for you, sweet girl!
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