A toddler is thriving after doctors used a novel technique to treat her before she was born for a rare genetic disease. The girl, now 16 months, began receiving the critical protein her body can’t make while still in the womb. The treatment was delivered through a needle inserted through the mother’s abdomen and guided into a vein in the umbilical cord. The disease killed two of the girl’s sisters before they turned 3. She was treated at an Ottawa hospital with a treatment plan pioneered by a doctor in San Francisco through an unusual collaboration.
In a first, doctors treat fatal genetic disease before birth
