Little boy in desperate need of stem cell donation hopes to find match in Montreal – CTV
March 15, 2024
Fifteen-month-old Leo Kent is your typical fun-loving toddler.
His favourite activities are watching Ms. Rachel and going to the playground, but he lives with a grave disease that marks every day of his young life.
“We’re kind of scared. We don’t really know what to do,” his father, Thomas Kent, tells CTV News over Zoom from the family’s home in San Francisco, U.S.
Leo was diagnosed at six months old with X-linked hyper-IgM syndrome, a rare primary immunodeficiency disease caused by a gene mutation.
It occurs almost exclusively in boys, affecting one in every million.
According to numerous medical research, “the overall prognosis is poor, with an average of 20 per cent survival by age 25.”
As a result, Leo needs to find a stem cell transplant match in order to survive the disease.
