Massive Skin Replacement Saves Child’s Life
European doctors use gene therapy to correct an inherited disease and replace 80 percent of Syrian refugee's epidermis
By Karen Weintraub on November 8, 2017
The German doctors realized they had to do something drastic or their seven-year-old patient would die. The boy had escaped war-ravaged Syria with his parents, and a rare genetic disease had left him with raw, blistering sores over 80 percent of his body. His doctors in a children’s burn unit tried everything they could to treat his illness, called junctional epidermolysis bullosa—even grafting some skin from his father to see if it would heal the child’s wounds. But his body rejected this. Finally, they e-mailed Michele De Luca, a researcher in Italy, to ask for help.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massive-skin-replacement-saves-childs-life/
