Here's a good news break for you in the middle of clown world.
Baby Augustine was born with an incredibly rare genetic disease with no known cure. But after taking Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), this baby has become the first to travel the road to recovery from Mitchell Syndrome.
Mitchell Syndrome has only had 20 documented cases in recorded medicine, and was only named back in 2019 for a young man, Mitchell Herndon, who passed away from the disease in October of that year.
Baby Augustine, who just turned 1 in May, was born healthy, but at 3 months he had to be hospitalized for hypoglycemia, and then soon afterward Baby Augustine's health began to decline.
The baby lost his hearing and then, at 6 months, completely stopped eating.
At first doctors said it was just down to teethin[g], but an MRI scan showed deterioration of the protective covering of nerve fibres in his brain known as demyelination.
Augustine's mother Kristen and his father Moses, "begged" for further genetic testing, which revealed a genetic mutation of a gene called ACOX1, leading to the diagnoses of Mitchell syndrome aged seven months.
Augustine's parents learned that there were only 20 known cases of Mitchell Syndrome, and that every previous patient had passed away from the disease.
The one thing they learned from the Mitchell and Friends Foundation was that Vitamin B2 seemed to have a positive impact on a few patients.
The family began treating their son by giving him B2 and changes started happening.
"He can sit up, eat and crawl which doctors never expected him to do," said Kristen. "But there's no research so we don't know what will happen — we have nobody to guide us because the condition is so rare."
"Normally when people lose a skill like movement, it's gone forever; nerve function goes, then eventually brain function," she explains. "But that hasn't happened for Augustine."
There's a long road left to travel for the family, but Augustine is the first case where doctors have seen any signs of recovery and regaining skills.
The family plans to give Augustine cochlear implants when he's older and is working on learning sign language in the mean time, in case his hearing never heals.
For now, this is a miraculous turn of events. Pray for little Augustine!
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
