Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week Sept 18-24

This is my niece Kennedy. She just turned 10 years old about a week ago. She has Mitochondrial Disease and has many health issues from having this but she is a happy girl. You can find out more about Kennedy on my sister's blog. Also you can read more about other children with this disease too.

Mitochondrial Disease is? So many of us have never even heard of Mitochondrial Disease. I hadn't until a few years ago when we found out that my neice has this. This is an uncureable disease that is affecting our children by becoming severly ill and causing so many heartaches. This is a disease that we need to spread awareness on Right Now. We need to find a cure Soon for this disease - To help save the lives of our babies and children.

This is information provided from United Mitochodrial Disease Foundation

About Mitochondrial Disease:

Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.

Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems.

Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.

WHY IS RESEARCH SO CRITICAL?

There are no known treatments or cures for mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondria may play a far greater role in human health than scientists and doctors have realized. Any health concern that is an energy problem could be related to the mitochondria.

Further research into the mitochondrion and primary mitochondrial diseases (those due to genetic defect) would benefit millions of people. It would offer hope to the thousands suffering from this debilitating and often fatal disease and provide a broad range of new therapeutic approaches for attempting to treat these other very common and incapacitating illnesses and conditions.

MITOCHONDRIAL DEFECTS ARE A CENTRAL FACTOR IN HUMAN HEALTH AND DISEASE.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is at the core of a surprising range of very common illnesses and conditions, and represents a promising new avenue for their treatment. As the mitochondria are responsible for producing energy, any illness that has an energy problem could be related to the mitochondria. Diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction have been implicated include:

• Alzheimer’s Dementia, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), mental retardation, deafness and blindness, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and stroke. Over 50 million people in the US suffer from these chronic degenerative disorders. While it cannot yet be said that mitochondrial defects cause these problems, it is clear that mitochondria are involved because their function is measurably disturbed.

• Even autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Sjogrens syndrome, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis appear to have a mitochondrial basis to illness.

• Mitochondrial dysfunction has been associated with a wide range of solid tumors, proposed to be central to the aging process, and found to be a common factor in the toxicity of a variety of physical and chemical agents.

Now that you have read this information...You know why we need to help in this awareness campaign!! Please keep Kennedy in your prayers!