Boy gets new body of skin

A BOY close to death with a genetic disease has been cured with new skin on 80% of his body.

Scientists took a section of the seven-year-old’s skin, which would tear and blister, and modified the defective gene causing it.

In a world first, Italian medics grew sheets of the healthy skin in a lab for grafting on to his body.

After 21 months the boy’s skin is normal and he is back at school in western Germany – and playing his first football.