Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the commonest life-threatening genetic disease affecting people of northern European descent. In the UK, it affects approximately one newborn in 2,400. Babies born with the disease, if untreated, cannot digest their food normally, fail to thrive, and are subject to severe, repeated and chronic lung infections which are the usual cause of death. When CF was first described in the 1930s, life expectancy was less than five years. [click link for full article]
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