She defines herself as “miraculous.” Two years after learning that she had acute leukemia, a woman from Ile-de-France survived thanks to a fecal microbiota transfer as part of a clinical trial, reports Le Point.
In March 2022, when the diagnosis comes, doctors predict that Marie-Hélène will live only two to three months if no treatment is applied. “I immediately wrote my advance directives, organized my papers, my photos. I watched my whole life go by, but I wanted to leave in peace and for my three children to have nothing to do,” confesses the former graphic designer of. Magazine.
To destroy the cancer cells, he is given chemotherapy at the Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris. A treatment complemented by a bone marrow transplant from your child to prevent any recurrence.
“I gave him life, he gave it back to me,” he rejoices.
“I ended up believing it”
But instead of attacking the residual cancer cells, the cells from your transplant turn against your healthy organs. And since it occurs in “between 10 and 20%” of cases, Marie-Hélène’s graft-versus-host disease is “very serious,” according to Florent Malard, a professor in the hospital’s hematology department.
Treatments followed, first corticosteroids and then ruxolitinib, to no avail. Marie-Hélène’s condition does not improve, on the contrary. Her doctors then proposed a fecal microbiota transfer within the framework of a clinical trial carried out with the company Maat Pharma.
A final treatment to which the patient reacts positively and which allows her to leave the hospital ten months after her diagnosis. “After hearing him tell me, I ended up believing that I am a miracle,” says the patient. For more than a year, although the story is not over, the patient has been able to return to the comfort of her home and the small joys of everyday life.
Source: BFM TV
