News about Holly Hughes

It's difficult to imagine that eight-year-old Holly Hughes (pictured left with her little sister Summer, two) has contracted leukaemia twice, beaming with joy in a rainbow-coloured dress. Aged 2 - one of the most common childhood diseases - acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, which affects white blood cells - was diagnosed, and she endured brutal chemotherapy and steroids. She was so young she needed physiotherapy to learn to walk again. Last year, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, or AML, which affects the bone marrow. Now she is flourishing, serving as a shining example of the increasingly optimistic prognoses for children with common cancers. Elliot Abel (top right), a patient from Essex, was diagnosed with NLPHL in 2013 after discovering a lump on his thigh. Elliot is still cancer-free today, but he has been largely spared from the side effects since receiving little toxic chemo. When Oliver Bell (bottom right with parents Michael and Sara) was born earlier this year, his parents feared the worst. An ultrasound scan revealed a 6 cm lump on his thigh, which doctors said was likely to be an infantile fibrosarcoma, a soft tissue tumor that would require surgery and chemotherapy. However, little Oliver was not treated at all after tests revealed the lump was, in fact, benign. Thanks to groundbreaking DNA analysis from a sample of Oliver's blood performed at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.