Twitter’s homepage lists #WearYellowForSeth as one of the popular hashtags of the day, but there is more to the tag than just a simple Internet trend.
Earlier this month, a woman posted a video on YouTube with her five-year-old son, Seth, requesting that people wear his favorite color, yellow, on March 27 to bring awareness to severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). This is a disease Seth was diagnosed with at five months old.
“SCID is a group of severe, life-threatening diseases; they cause certain types of white blood cells -- T- and B- lymphocytes -- to not function properly,” said David Rosenthal, DO, immunologist at the North Shore-LIJ Health System.
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Dr. Rosenthal said that between 40 and 100 children born in the United States each year have this disease.
“Effective treatments such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, gene therapy or enzyme replacement for children with different types of SCID can be performed,” Dr. Rosenthal said. “These treatments help recreate a ‘new, functional’ immune system for the children, which will protect them against future infections. It is essential that patients get these treatments while they are healthy.”
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Vincent Bonagura, MD, chief of the division of allergy and immunology at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, has helped to make screening for SCID more routine in New York State.
“Dr. Vincent Bonagura has worked extensively with the New York State Newborn Screening Program so that every child born in New York State is now screened upon birth for SCID as a part of tests run routinely on all newborns,” Dr. Rosenthal said. “Thus we are now in New York, and in several other states, identifying children who have SCID earlier in life, before they become ill with serious infections. This allows us to treat the children earlier and help them live healthy lives.”
