Syracuse girl's family still hopes for sight

A Syracuse girl’s family continues to gather tests and documents needed for a trek to China, where she hopes stem cell treatments will restore her sight.

Savannah Watring, 8, plans to travel with her father and grandmother, Ravanna Watring, to China for stem cell treatments as soon as possible. But, it could be this summer before the little girl will make the trip.
Savannah was born blind with optic nerve hypoplasia (ONH), which happens when a child’s optic nerve fails to develop in utero. The girl’s family members have raised money for the trip since they heard in September about a Missouri girl with ONH whose family says the stem cell treatments restored her sight.

Clubs hosted tractor rides, dinners and other benefits and, along with individual donors, have raised the money Savannah needs for her trip and treatments. The family collected enough money to pay for the treatment, travel and the 30-day stay in China, which they estimated costs a total of about $50,000. Watring declined to give an exact figure for the amount of money raised.

Watring said she initially hoped to take the trip this month, but doctors in China wanted updated brain tests for Savannah. The family also needed to arrange for an ophthalmologist in the United States to examine Savannah before her trip and update doctors in China upon her return.

Kirshner Ross-Vaden is vice president of the foreign patient division for Beike Biotech, the China-based company where Savannah plans to be treated. Ross-Vaden said she is waiting for Savannah’s medical documents to evaluate whether she will be accepted as a patient. She said the company is booked full for treatments until mid-July.

Skeptics in the United States call the stem cell treatments experimental and say there’s a lack of scientific proof that it works.
Ross-Vaden said that more than 65 doctors helped create the treatment, which uses umbilical cord stem cells. Doctors conducted safety trials in 2001 and 2002 overseen by the Chinese government.

So far, 2,500 patients have been treated, including 12 with ONH, with no infections or complications, Ross-Vaden said. Some 86 percent of patients saw “measurable improvements during treatment,” she said.

“I’d like to see someone here in the United States match those results,” said Ross-Vaden, who works in Chicago.

Savannah can see light and dark, but is otherwise blind. Watring said it would be worth the trip if Savannah’s sight can be improved at all.
Interest in the treatments has grown. Beike started treating patients in October 2005 and saw an average of seven foreign patients per month.

Now, the company treats 30 to 40 foreign patients a month, Ross-Vaden said.

The first patient treated for OHN was in June 2007. The second child was Rylea Bartlett, the Missouri girl who’s tale of success prompted the Watring family’s hope of giving Savannah sight.

Here’s how the treatment works: Patients receive several stem cell transfusions, which include 10 to 15 million stem cells each. They also receive neural growth factors and cord serum transfusions. The transfusions are injected into the spinal canal.

Beike tells patients that each may respond differently, but children typically have better results. There are no guarantees to the effectiveness in every case, according to the company.