A UK toddler has regained her hearing after undergoing breakthrough gene therapy. Her parents, Jo and James Sandy, say Opal can hear soft sounds through the pioneering treatment, which can be used to help other children who have hearing loss through genetic conditions. - REUTERS
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00:00 Banging on blocks and playing the flute, Opal Sandy looks like an average energetic toddler.
00:07 It would be hard to tell she was born deaf and unable to hear just months earlier.
00:13 She's the first patient in England to regain her hearing through gene therapy.
00:18 That was 24 weeks post-surgery and we heard the phrase 'near normal hearing'.
00:24 She was turning to really soft sounds.
00:27 Yeah, they played us the sounds that she was turning to
00:32 and we were quite mind-blown by how soft it was, how quiet it was.
00:36 There are sounds that I think in day-to-day life you might not even notice yourself.
00:41 Opal received treatment as part of a groundbreaking global gene therapy trial,
00:46 which doctors say can combat various genetic conditions that cause hearing loss in children.
00:52 We can start to use gene therapy in young children, restore hearing
00:57 from a variety of different kinds of genetic hearing loss
00:59 and then have a more one-and-done type approach where we actually restore the hearing.
01:04 They don't have to have cochlear implants and other technologies that have to be replaced.
01:08 Opal's parents have described the results as mind-blowing.
01:12 I think we'd been given a really unique opportunity
01:17 with no real evidence that any harm or adverse effects were likely to come to her.
01:23 I think a lot of parents, regardless of their difficulties their children face,
01:28 to be given an opportunity to potentially make obstacles easier for her to overcome
01:34 was a risk definitely worth taking.
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