The treatment, which went into the world medical literature, was also published in the latest issue of the scientific medical journal “New England Journal of Medicine”.
A team of doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, Canada, diagnosed the baby of mother, named Sobia Bashir, with Pompe disease in prenatal tests in 2021.
THEY ACCEPT EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT
The couple Zahir and Sobia Bashir, who lost their two children due to the same genetic disease before, accepted the doctors’ offer of experimental treatment in the womb for their 16-month-old baby named Ayla today.
Doctors gave Ayla’s mother six infusions between weeks 24 and 37 of her pregnancy to give her Pompe patients an enzyme deficient.
The enzyme deficient in the baby was injected into the fetal umbilical cord vein using ultrasound-guided needles.
After prenatal enzyme replacement therapy at Ottawa Hospital, Ayla was born on June 22, 2021.
HEART AND MUSCLE DEVELOPMENT NORMAL
Tests conducted in Ayla showed that her heart and muscle development was normal.
While the treatment performed on baby Ayla was recorded in the world medical literature as “the first baby treated in the womb for a genetic disease”, the case was also registered as the “world’s first intrauterine treatment”.
Pompe disease, which is seen in one in 100,000 babies in the world, usually causes death by causing heart enlargement and muscle weakness in babies.