Émilie and Yann are looking for answers.
In Poitou, in La Villedieu-du-Clain (Vienne), this couple is the parent of two children, Noa and Elsy, both suffering from type B acute lymphoblastic leukemia making them totally immunodepressive, reports France Bleu .
An almost unique case in two children of the same siblings.
“It’s almost improbable, even the geneticists we met had never seen this case with their own eyes!
», confides the father.
If the eldest is in remission, his little sister Elsy, 3 years old, was diagnosed last September and has just started chemotherapy.
“Today she is fighting courageously and voluntarily with numerous hospitalizations for the administration of chemotherapy and lumbar punctures,” say her parents.
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As in 2020 when Noa was diagnosed with blood cancer at the age of 5, they decided to launch a fundraiser so that Elsy could realize her dream: spending a weekend at Disneyland Paris “when her condition will allow it.”
At the same time, this fund also aims to help with genetic research into this disease, but also to help the family financially, Émilie having stopped working to take care of her two “superheroes”.
900 new cases per year in France
They then launched a call for testimonies which “could be decisive for the research and bring hope to other families”, to find out if other people have heard of similar cases.
Indeed, if health professionals “exclude an environmental cause”, they do not completely exclude the question of heredity.
If there is a genetic link, parents would like to know for their children if there is “a risk that they will unfortunately pass it on to their own children”.
In France, for the year 2018, the estimated number of new cases of precursor cell leukemia and lymphoblastic lymphoma was 900, including 517 cases in men and 383 in women, according to figures from Public Health France.
According to the ARC Foundation for Cancer Research, the survival rate for this disease is 90% at the age of 5.