Indian-origin boy recovers from rare life-threatening genetic disorder in Singapore

Singapore: A 19-month-old Indian-origin boy in Singapore has fully recovered from a rare life-threatening genetic disorder after a stem-cell transplant, according to a media report.

Mannat Singh was diagnosed with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) when he was just six days old, making him highly vulnerable to even the common flu, The Straits Times newspaper reported.

Mannat, the first baby in Singapore to be diagnosed with SCID at birth, successfully underwent the stem-cell transplant in 2023 before the emergence of SCID symptoms.

Today, Mannat is healthy, the paper reported.

As for baby Mannat, he had Artemis SCID, a rare form of recessive radiosensitive SCID, which meant he could not be treated with radiation or have certain scans done.

Without treatment, Mannat would not have made it past his first birthday, according to the Singapore daily report.

His mother Harminder Kaur, 39, a nurse, recalled the guilt and fear she felt “because I made him this way”.

“It did not help our state of mind when his odds were stacked against him,” said her husband Harminder Singh, 39, an IT consultant.

“I feel now that life has returned to normal and we have put the past behind us,” Kaur said.

Mannat's condition was diagnosed at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) through the National Expanded Newborn Screening (NENS) programme.

The programme, which started in 2006 with the aim of screening all babies born in Singapore for metabolic and heritable diseases, was expanded in 2019 to include five other treatable serious childhood-onset conditions such as SCID and cystic fibrosis.

Dr Bianca Chan, a consultant with the rheumatology and immunology service at KKH, said the only real curative treatment for SCID is a bone marrow transplant from a healthy donor. Stem cells from the bone marrow of a healthy donor can develop into infection-fighting T-cells, helping babies with SCID build a functioning immune system.

“The highest success is when it is performed within the first three to four months of life, before the baby develops significant infections. This makes SCID screening at birth crucial for early diagnosis to actively prevent infection,” the paper quoted Dr Chan as saying.