Alex is in Italy, arrived at the Child Jesus of London – Medicine

The little Alessandro Maria Montresor arrived in Italy and, as far as we know, just arrived at Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome. Alex, 18 months old and suffering from a serious genetic disorder, was admitted to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Until today, the search for a donor totally compatible with the child has not succeeded. In the child, Jesus will be subjected to an innovative transplantation technique: a parent's bone marrow transplant with a method of stem cell manipulation.

The story of Alex, who lives in London with Italian parents, has sparked in recent months a solidarity game on the Internet, where the parents of the child had appealed for a matching donor for transplantation. In a few weeks, the network has mobilized and hundreds of people, from north to south of Italy, have undergone a blood test to check their compatibility, registered at the same time in the Italian registry of donors bone marrow. In fact, the search for a compatible donor for Alex is already included in the wider network of international registries, which have a total of about 30 million subscribers. To date, however, no compatible donors have been found. In fact, in recent weeks, the availability of an Italian donor whose degree of compatibility had been deemed insufficient by the British hospital has failed. In recent days, another non-Italian compatible donor has been identified, but this would have delayed the availability for transplantation in the coming months. But Alex's situation does not allow much time: the child is actually undergoing therapy with an experimental drug and, even if his life is not threatened in a very short time, its effectiveness tends to decrease with time.

Hence the need to get grafted as soon as possible. This is why parents have decided to accept the availability, already declared in recent months by the Holy See hospital, to look after the child. In Child Jesus, Alex will be subjected to an innovative graft technique for which the Roman hospital is one of the first in the world: with this method, 150 children have already been grafted, of which 50 with a primitive immunodeficiency and 6 with the same disease of Alexander, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. The percentage of definitive cure in children with primary immunodeficiency is 85%.

YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED: