Do Children React Any Differently Than Adults?
This was originally thought of as a disease of old age and symptoms were largely ignored in younger patients until the last decade or so. So there isn’t much in the literature about childhood ET and most of it simply reports treatment with anagrelide. We have heard of the mother of a teenager whose daughter had a number of serious complications but her ET was discovered accidentally after her spleen was removed. Her symptoms had been ignored for a number of years and this will cause problems in adults and children alike. A second teenager whose mother’s participates in our MPD-NET group had experienced TIA’s and is being treated with interferon. We had a new member on MPD-NET whose then 22 month old son was diagnosed at 8 months old, is symptomatic and Drew, (story below) was 6 at diagnosis and was symptomatic. Both children are treated with anagrelide.
