Baby will donate cells to treat brother with rare genetic syndrome

For the first time in Israel, a healthy baby girl has been born at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center to a couple who both carry single defective genes that can give their offspring Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that occurs in about one in 50,000 births. Not only is the baby - who in her embryonic stage was selected from among other embryos that carried the disease - healthy, but she will be able to donate bone marrow to her older brother, who suffers from the syndrome.

The parents and relatives were not found suitable to donate bone marrow to their sick son. But they decided that they wanted to have more children - healthy ones - by undergoing preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This involves taking a cell from embryos a few days old to examine the genes and implant healthy embryos in the woman's womb.
Lire la suite » (Source: article de Judy Siegel-Itzkovich @ JPost)
Anti Boycott Israel blog: maladies génétiques