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Scientists Save Child's Life By Growing Him New Skin (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: The German doctors realized they had to do something drastic or their seven-year-old patient would die. The boy had escaped war-ravaged Syria with his parents, and a rare genetic disease had left him with raw, blistering sores over 80 percent of his body. His doctors in a children's burn unit tried everything they could to treat his illness, called junctional epidermolysis bullosa -- even grafting some skin from his father to see if it would heal the child's wounds. But his body rejected this. Finally, they e-mailed Michele De Luca, a researcher in Italy, to ask for help.
The doctors took a small sample of skin from one of the few places on the boy's body where it was not flaming red or flaking off, and sent it to De Luca. His team at the center used a virus to insert into the skin cells a correct copy of a gene called LAMB3; the boy's own defective copy had caused his epidermolysis bullosa. De Luca and his colleagues grew the skin cells over scaffolds in their lab to form large sheets, the way doctors often do for burn patients. In two surgeries in October and November 2015, the Italian and German teams covered the boy's limbs, sides and back with these sheets of fresh skin. After being too sick even to get out of bed before his surgeries, "he was standing up already by Christmas," De Luca says. In January 2016 the boy, whose name is not being released to protect his privacy, received a few more skin patches -- and in February he was released from the University Hospitals of the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
The doctors took a small sample of skin from one of the few places on the boy's body where it was not flaming red or flaking off, and sent it to De Luca. His team at the center used a virus to insert into the skin cells a correct copy of a gene called LAMB3; the boy's own defective copy had caused his epidermolysis bullosa. De Luca and his colleagues grew the skin cells over scaffolds in their lab to form large sheets, the way doctors often do for burn patients. In two surgeries in October and November 2015, the Italian and German teams covered the boy's limbs, sides and back with these sheets of fresh skin. After being too sick even to get out of bed before his surgeries, "he was standing up already by Christmas," De Luca says. In January 2016 the boy, whose name is not being released to protect his privacy, received a few more skin patches -- and in February he was released from the University Hospitals of the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.
The results are published in Nature today.
And so it is indeed news.
https://www.nature.com/article...
The story came out today because the peer-reviewed article came out today.
The surgeries were done at those times you mention. The skin healing and coming to an equilibrium would take months after that. To confirm it was growing as normal would take more months after that. Tests on samples collected after several months would themselves take months after that. Writing the paper would take months after that. Review would take at least one month. And that brings us up to the present day. Doing the surgery and saying "Well we healed him permanently" the next day would be premature.
This isn't some app some douche made that takes pictures and adds new filters, this is real science, and real science takes time.
Next stop, foreskin regeneration!
This is a really great outcome. It would be horrible to have such a debilitating disease. For these scientists to be able to fix his DNA to cure him of this is truly remarkable, and should be applauded. Now, this young boy gets to grow up and have a chance at enjoying life without these sores and the crippling pain that is associated with it.
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"...to the moon..." - Neil Armstrong
It's a "triumph over adversity" story. That you feel the need to question it shows you are a terrible person.