Aslan singer Christy Dignam has said he can’t believe his luck after doctors found a cure for his rare cancer.
Christy, 59, was originally given the grim news he had only six months to live back in 2013 when diagnosed with a rare incurable form of the disease, named amyloidosis.
But now a gene-silencing drug which appears to halt the condition has been approved for use in the UK.
Speaking to RTE, the Crazy World hitmaker said: “I suffer from a condition called amyloidosis and they’ve just discovered a cure for it, which is amazing.
“Up to now you couldn’t treat it.”
The new life-saving drug, Patisiran, is the first treatment of its type to be approved.
“My DNA is telling my liver to produce a protein, it’s a negative protein which is cancerous, this (medicine) blocks the signal going from your DNA to your liver so it stops producing this amyloid protein,” Christy explained.
“It was terminal up until now, it’s stopping it from being terminal,” he told the Ray D’Arcy Show on RTÉ Radio 1.
Christy’s doctor Prof Julian Gillmore, an amyloidosis expert from the Royal Free Hospital in London, told the BBC that: “(Patisiran) has very far-reaching potential consequences, it has a huge potential.
“That’s who I go to, I go over there every two months,” said Christy.
The Dublin legend said his initial reaction to the news was “guilt.”
“I felt guilty because I was thinking of all the people who have cancer who don’t have cures.
“I feel unworthy or something.”
The grandfather, who last night played the Longford Summer Festival, said he will try his best to get access to the drug.
“I’m going to do everything that I can. At the moment it’s been prescribed by the NHS in England so we’re trying to get it into the HSE now. I don’t know what the story is, I’ll have to suss it out.”
