Toddler With ‘Childhood Alzheimer’s’ Begins Treatment At Chicago Hospital

Marian McGlockin, 19-months-old, from southern California, is currently in Chicago so she can receive treatment at Rush University Medical Center for a rare disease that is sometimes called “Childhood Alzheimer’s.” Niemann-Pick disease type C is a fatal, progressive, neurodegenerative storage disorder.

Currently, only 500 children in the world have been diagnosed and half will die before the age of ten without intervention. From the family’s Go Fund Me, “It is a recessive genetic disease where cells cannot process and dispose of cholesterol, resulting in harmful accumulation throughout the body. This causes enlarged organs, lung damage, and slow and steady neurological deterioration, horrifically causing dementia – leaving children not recognizing their mother’s voice, their father’s smile. Over time NPC children slowly but completely lose the ability to move, eat, speak or even breathe.”

The family is staying in Chicago so their little darling can receive treatment, via a spinal tap, every two weeks.

For more info and to help this family out, please visit their Facebook page or their Go Fund Me.

Jessica Sheehan, a healthy looking 18-year-old from Australia is also struggling with Niemann-Pick type C disease. Thankfully, she has also been selected to join the experimental VTS-270 drug trial and will do so in Melbourne.