Gene Therapy! A Plausible Cure for Genetic Diseases:

Finding new ways for curing diseases have always been the sole motive for medical researchers. One of the most current researches is curing via gene therapy. Gene therapy is a medical procedure that inserts gene into patient’s cells and tissues, which replaces the toxic mutant allele with a functional one. Although, gene therapy has promising results, but there is always room for further research in this matter.

A research was carried out in Italy, on the gene therapy where bone marrow stem cells of the patients were infused with the ‘virus’ carrying extracts of DNA with the correct instructions. For this purpose, the scientists selected three children and injected the virus, before the disease started to show symptoms. This experiment showed positive results as children were more interested in living their normal lives. Nonetheless, the patients were also monitored closely. The success of the gene therapy assures that other diseases can be treated in the same manner.

Researchers in Italy implanted modified gene which will eliminate the diseased gene in children suffering from diseases like Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and Metachromatic Leukodystrophy. In Metachromatice Leukodystrophy, infants appear healthy physically but their development starts to diminish early in their childhood because a part of their brain gets destroyed in this disease, while Wiskott-Aldritch Syndrome causes a faulty immune system. 

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