Irkutsk doctors treated a child with SMA with a Russian drug for the first time in the region

Doctors at the Irkutsk Regional Children's Clinical Hospital were the first in the entire region to help a six-month-old child with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) using the domestic drug Lantesens. Sergei Pak, head of the psychoneurological department of the hospital, told Izvestia on December 18.

"For the first time we treated a child with the preclinical stage of spinal muscular atrophy, that is, the child currently has no symptoms of the disease," Pak said.

He clarified that if the child does not receive treatment in the future, symptoms will appear. The doctor noted that during treatment the baby was injected not with the foreign device "Spinraza", but with its Russian analog "Lantesens", and this happened for the first time not only in the Irkutsk region, but also in Siberia.

"Spinraza" became the first SMA drug to be registered in the Russian Federation. It is administered to patients in the spinal canal. The foreign drug, as Pak noted, will no longer be supplied from 2025, and its place will be taken by "Lantesense". The head of the department pointed out that some parents would like to continue treating their children with the drug they have been receiving for the past three years, and this position is understandable, but there is no choice.

Nevertheless, as the doctor pointed out, the domestic analog has proved itself well, it causes positive dynamics in patients. Pak emphasized that "Lantesens" is essentially the same drug as "Spinraza", it consists of the same components, and even the drug vials have a similar appearance.

Earlier, on November 27, doctors at the Children's Regional Hospital in Belgorod successfully operated on a newborn baby with congenital diaphragmatic hernia - a rare pathology in which the abdominal organs are moved into the chest and press on the heart and lungs. It is noted that the baby was taken from the perinatal center to the regional hospital on the second day after birth, and the next day he underwent surgery.