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LISTEN: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta recently performed Georgia’s first commercial gene therapy transplant for a genetic disease requiring lifelong blood transfusions. GPB’s Ellen Eldridge explains.
Doctors with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta successfully corrected a genetic defect via a commercially available transplant.
Beta thalassemia, an inherited disorder where patients are unable to make normal hemoglobin because of a genetic defect, is very common in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia and Southeast Asia, but it’s uncommon here in the United States, said Dr. Jeanne Boudreaux, director of the Comprehensive Thalassemia Treatment Program at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.
She has been treating Josh Dri since he was 5 years old for the blood disorder. The condition causes severe anemia and requires blood transfusions every three weeks…