An investigational treatment pioneered by a Duke Health pediatrician resulted in a one-year survival rate of 77% among children born with a rare condition in which they lack an immune system.
The treatment, using cultured thymus tissue (CTT), has been studied at Duke since 1993 for babies born without a thymus gland, which produces the all-important T cells that are key to fighting infections.
Without treatment, babies born with the rare condition, called congenital athymia, are vulnerable to fatal infections and do not survive beyond early childhood.
“The survival rates for CTT are encouraging and give families hope that their children could live full lives,” said Louise Markert, M.D., professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke and lead author of a study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.