Trials hope for kids battling leukaemia
Research may help wipe out disease
Prof Owen Smith with James, Kate and Noreen Doyle CHILD cancer research could eliminate leukaemia, experts have claimed.
Top doctors said they are hopeful of getting to the root cause of the aggressive disease.
Random genetic changes in the womb and exposure to particular viruses in early years have been shown to trigger leukaemia.
Cancer specialist Professor Owen Smith said: “Approximately one in 20 newborn babies harbour this genetic mutation, yet only one in 10,000 children develop this specific type of leukaemia.”
The Children’s Medical Research Fund said it needs cash to support this potentially life-saving work as less than 2% of the total spent on medical research in Ireland is earmarked for paediatric treatment.
Prof Smith added: “It’s wonderful that research is pointing towards more answers and we are another step closer to identifying some of the causes of childhood leukaemia.” A mum whose two children were diagnosed with cancer insisted this work is crucial.
Noreen Doyle’s son James, 13, endured a long battle with the disease as a toddler and a decade later his eight-year-old sister Kate was also diagnosed.
The mum of four, from Naas in Co Kildare, said: “My son James, my second child, was a year-and-a-half when he became unwell. He had loads of setbacks. He stopped walking. He was in a wheelchair for a while.
“He really struggled for the first three months of his treatment and spent a lot of time in Crumlin.
“It took him about four-and-a-half years altogether for him to become well again.” Noreen and her husband John Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin
KILDARE YESTERDAY
have two other children – Adam, 14, and 10-year-old Alison.
She said: “This day last year our lives took a new direction.
“Kate, my youngest, who was seven at the time, was unwell.
“I just had a gut instinct that we were visiting the same thing again. I brought her to the same GP. She said, ‘Not a hope, lightening never strikes twice’.”
But her older brother’s participation in a research trial at Crumlin has helped Kate.
Noreen said: “The prognosis was better, the rate of curing the disease was better and the length of the treatment is shorter.
“It shaved six months off the treatment length that Kate will have to go through so she has definitely benefitted from him being in that trial.
“These trials are critical to the ongoing treatment. I’ve seen first-hand the benefit of the money Children’s Medical Research Fund Crumlin puts into both Our Lady’s and also into the National Children’s Research Centre.”
These trials are critical to treatment ...I’ve seen first-hand the benefit NOREEN DOYLE