{"id":2887,"date":"2013-06-10T04:08:30","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T18:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=2887"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:37:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:37:52","slug":"life-is-a-miracle-for-sarah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/life-is-a-miracle-for-sarah\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is a miracle for Sarah"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2888\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2888\" style=\"width: 303px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2013\/06\/sarah-innes.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2888\" alt=\"Bubbly four-year-old Sarah Innes, with mum Karina and stepfather Kevin Mason. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun. \" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2013\/06\/sarah-innes-290x163.jpg\" width=\"303\" height=\"177\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2888\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bubbly four-year-old Sarah Innes, with mum Karina and stepfather Kevin Mason. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After four years of research, doctors have finally discovered why Sarah Innes was\u00a0born without a pancreas.<\/p>\n<p>Sarah was first admitted to The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH)\u00a0in 2009 soon after birth and battled to survive neonatal diabetes.\u00a0 But RCH doctors were stunned to also discover Sarah was missing her pancreas &#8211; the first Australian in this position.<\/p>\n<p>As Sarah became the youngest person ever to be fitted with an insulin pump, her mother, Karina, sent DNA samples to experts in\u00a0Chicago hoping they might\u00a0determine a diagnosis.<\/p>\n<p>The team at the\u00a0RCH also sent samples to researchers in the UK. The work paid off last year when scientists identified a gene called GATA6 in 15 children born without a pancreas.<\/p>\n<p>Karina is now in contact with the families of these children in New Zealand, Romania, Germany, the UK, the US and Canada.<\/p>\n<p>While the diagnosis has finally brought some relief, the rareness of the condition means that doctors don&#8217;t know what the future holds. Sarah continues to amaze her family by fighting against the odds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen she went home no one expected that she would make her first birthday, then her second birthday \u2013 and those first two years were really tough,\u201d says Ms Innes. \u201cShe is off to school next year and it is a miracle. She is very bubbly, very cheeky and she lights up a room.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>RCH paediatrician Dr Daryl Efron said Sarah has become more stable in the past year despite her complicated medical issues and recently suffering from epilepsy. \u201cShe has done better than we expected \u2013 she is a tough kid,\u201d Dr Efron said.<\/p>\n<p>Next month Ms Innes\u00a0hopes\u00a0that Sarah can meet the international experts who discovered her condition when they meet for a conference on the breakthrough in Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four years of research led doctors to uncover why Sarah Innes was the first person in Australia born without a pancreas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2900,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions\/2900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}