But scientists have yet to find a cure and are channelling resources into gene therapy research.

Chloe Eyre has won Derbyshire County Council Young Achiever awards for the courageous manner in which she got on with life despite the constraints having cystic fibrosis placed on her.

HELEN BEIGHTON went to see how Chloe has coped with the most recent installment of her treatment – a double lung transplant.


Christine Eyre used to watch children running up and down the street playing, and wish her daughter Chloe could join in with them.

But ten-year-old Chloe could barely walk to the end of the road without becoming exhausted.

Despite taking a cocktail of medicines and multiple physiotherapy sessions every day to control her cystic fibrosis, she was always quickly out of breath.

Chloe, of Ralph Road, Staveley, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at three weeks old, when a heel-prick test for the disease came back positive.

'Shock'

Christine (42) said: "It was a shock. I had never heard of it before and nobody in the family had got it."

On diagnosis, Chloe was prescribed antibiotics to fight off lung infections and replacement pancreatic enzymes to break down food and help her take in more energy.

Her parents learnt to carry out physiotherapy sessions to clear the mucus that collected in her lungs, and hospital visits were a regular occurrence – first to Chesterfield Royal and later to Nottingham.

Eventually, after reaching a point where she needed to be fed directly into her stomach to keep her weight up and wear an oxygen mask every night, Chloe was sent to Great Ormond Street Hospital, the specialist children's hospital in London, for further tests and was put on the waiting list for a double lung transplant.

Christine said: "She was assessed for a lung transplant because her lungs were deteriorating. She was getting worse – she used to walk down the street to my mum's but it got to the point where she couldn't do that any more."

Then suddenly, a year after joining the transplant list, Christine got a call earlier this summer to tell her that a pair of suitable donor lungs had become available for Chloe.

"We got a call in the early hours and about an hour and a half later the ambulance came for us.

"It took us down to Great Ormond Street," Christine said.
"On the way down I kept asking Chloe: 'Is this what you want?'.

"I was frightened she wouldn't come out of the operation, but she was determined she would have it and she would be okay."

Chloe was in the operating theatre for more than six hours but showed characteristic bravery and perseverance to make a quick recovery.

"Within 12 hours of the operation her ventilator was switched off and then a few days later she suddenly said to me: 'Listen – I can breathe, listen.'

"For the first time she could take a deep breath," Christine said.
Chloe will have to take drugs for the rest of her life to stop her body rejecting her new lungs but she is already back home with Christine, dad Wayne and sister Samantha (12) – awaiting the arrival of a new baby brother which doctors have said does not have cystic fibrosis.

Chloe said: "I can walk a lot further now – before I had to go up the road in a wheelchair or on my dad's back, but now I can walk. I can run about, play and do lots of things I never used to be able to do."