Understanding Immune System Disorders at Birth

Your immune system can be born broken and here's what that looks like. Babies with SCID

have basically no working immune system at all. They can die from infections that

wouldn't even make you sneeze. Some kids are missing their thymus so they can't make

T cells. Others have neutrophils that literally can't kill bacteria even when they eat them.

The craziest part is there are over 350 different ways your immune system can fail from birth.

Some kids bleed constantly because their platelets are tiny. Others get infections

from their own gut bacteria. The good news is we can now screen newborns with a

simple blood test and catch these before infections become deadly. Bone marrow transplants