STAT+: A breakthrough cystic fibrosis drug gave them the gift of time. But miracles come with complications.
“It’s been truly miraculous,” said J. Samuel Pope, director of the adult cystic fibrosis program at Hartford Hospital. “We used to have five to seven patients at any one time…
The small box full of promises arrived at Jessica Anderson’s home on her 31st birthday. A little bigger than a postcard, it was white with green lettering and navy and fuchsia flourishes. She opened it and pulled out a card with pills arrayed in plastic bubbles, coral ones for the morning, baby-blue for the evening.
The culmination of decades of research, a reservoir of hope for thousands, these oblong tablets were supposed to transform her life, a life circumscribed by illness and the specter of early death.
You could say that Jessie had been sick since before she was born. A bowel obstruction detected on her mother’s ultrasound led the obstetrician to surmise the baby was likely to have cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness that impairs breathing and digestion.
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