Personal injury news
20/12/2007

Mesothelioma woman shocks doctors

An Australian woman has given hope to mesothelioma sufferers everywhere by surviving the disease and going on to give birth to a child ten years after her original diagnosis.

The 39-year-old was discovered to be suffering from the asbestos-related disease in 1997 and doctors gave her less than a year to live.

But, just having given birth to her first child, she refused to give into the disease and participated in revolutionary gene therapy trials in the United States.

The therapy obviously had some positive effect but she doesn't hold it solely responsible for her miraculous recovery, citing her amazingly strong immune system and her willingness to keep battling as reasons that she's still alive.

Mesothelioma specialists are baffled about how she's managed to beat the disease but admit that they have seen others experience similar recoveries in the past.

An Australian professor spoke to journalists about the Adelaide woman's fight, saying: "I have seen other rare cases of mesothelioma that have gone into apparently spontaneous complete remission.

"We don't know the reasons for spontaneous regression like this in tumours. It might be due to some altered cellular dynamics within the tumour itself, but why that should happen we really have no clear idea."

It is thought that the woman contracted mesothelioma as a result of being exposed to asbestos when her parents extended their house when she was a young girl. It is believed she has not employed the services of a personal injury lawyer to help her make a mesothelioma compensation claim.