Doctors have successfully treated one of the world‘s most devastating diseases, which currently affects around 41,000 Americans.
One of the cruelest diseases in the world has finally been treated for the first time in history, thanks to a scientific breakthrough.
The disease runs through families, relentlessly killing brain cells, and effects approximately 200,000 to 300,000 people worldwide.
The Cleveland Clinic states that symptoms often start between the ages of 30 and 50, but this medical revelation opens the possibility of earlier treatment, preventing symptoms from ever emerging.
The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.
An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.
None of the patients who took part in the clinical trial are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work.
Others are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.
And while treatment is likely to be very expensive, it’s still provides a moment of hope for the families that are devastated by the fatal disease.
If one of your parents has the disease, there’s a 50% chance that you will inherit the altered gene and will eventually develop it too.
This mutation turns a normal protein needed in the brain into a killer of neurons.
But the goal of the treatment is to reduce levels of this toxic protein permanently, in just a single dose.
Professor Ed Wild, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at UCLH, said: “This is the result we’ve been waiting for.
“There was every chance that we would never see a result like this, so to be living in a world where we know this is not only possible, but the actual magnitude of the effect is breathtaking, it’s very difficult to fully encapsulate the emotion.”
The disease is known as Huntington’s, and the breakthrough has been dubbed ‘spectacular.’
The trial involved 29 patients, and three years on, data showed that fewer brain cells were dying than expected, and disease progression has slowed dramatically.
Despite being an expensive treatment, researchers believe it could ‘last for a lifetime.’
There isn’t an official price for the drug, but in the U.K., the NHS does pay for a £2.6m-per-patient gene therapy for haemophilia B.
