She knew that women with her genetic disease, cystic fibrosis, struggled to conceive. She also knew that, although CF patients are living longer than ever, they rarely lived long enough to see their children grow up.
The boom in babies born to women with CF is just one of the changes doctors have observed since Health Canada approved Trikafta in June of 2021.
Patients who grew up wondering whether they would live past their 30th birthdays are now rethinking their choices, she said. Should they have pursued higher education? Invested in RRSPs? Tried to have children? A new lease on life is undoubtedly a good thing, Dr. Stephenson added, “but for some patients it has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster.”
Trikafta is a combination of three chemical compounds that together make the faulty protein work better. The triple therapy is not a cure or a correction of the genetic defect that causes CF, and it can’t erase a lifetime of lung damage in older patients.But it is making a dramatic difference in the health of most who take it, according to CF doctors.
Rina Pinsky, 24, began to feel better just a few days after starting Trikafta through a special program in February of 2020. The reduction in transplants is one of the most encouraging findings in Cystic Fibrosis Canada’s new report. In 2021, 22 Canadian CF patients received transplants, down from 57 in 2019 and 61 in 2018.