Spontaneous cure of rare immune disease
Thursday, February 5, 2015 - 14:00
in Health & Medicine
A genetic phenomenon called chromothripsis, or 'chromosome shattering,' may have spontaneously cured the first person to be documented with WHIM syndrome. The patient was the subject of a 1964 study that first described the disorder, a syndrome of recurrent infections, warts and cancer caused by the inability of immune cells, particularly infection-fighting neutrophils, to leave the bone marrow and enter the bloodstream.