The one-year-old saved her brother’s life by donating her bone marrow. With this, India’s first ‘savior sibling’ experiment is a success. A couple conceived another child through IVF specifically to save their thalassemic son’s life, succeeded in its efforts after their one-year-old daughter donated her bone marrow to her sibling. Abhijeet, the second child of Sahdev Singh Solanki and Alpa Solanki, was born with Thalassemia major, a blood disorder in which a person is not able to make enough hemoglobin. Thalassemia-major patients require frequent blood transfusions and their life expectancy is also less.
Doctors advised them that bone marrow transplant is the last resort to treat the child, but they could not find the required HLA (human leukocyte antigen) match. “Due to the unavailability of matching HLA donors for the transplant, we opted for IVF with HLA matching,” Ahmedabad-based Nova IVF Fertility’s medical director Dr Manish Banker told. HLA typing is an established method for conceiving a child, who may donate cord blood or hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation to save a sibling with a critical illness.
“Bone marrow transplant from an HLA-identical donor is the best therapeutic option for thalassemia major patients. We took the challenge and created a healthy savior sibling to save her elder brother,” Banker said. Abhijeet’s parents conceived another child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to save him. In 2019, Abhijeet’s mother delivered a healthy baby girl Kavya. She was found to be the HLA match for the sibling. Kavya gained the required weight and her bone marrow was successfully transplanted to her brother Abhijeet. The ‘savior sibling’ experiment proved successful and the boy is now “risk-free”, doctors said.
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