Rare Skin Disease Chills Siblings From Inside Out

For more than 30 years, a Canadian woman and her siblings have endured a rare skin disease that at one time didn't even have a name, it is reported by the Daily Gleaner.

Rachel Doherty, 62, of Prince Edward Island, said she and her relatives have suffered for decades with familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome or FCAS. The condition makes them feel as though they are freezing from the inside out and causes burning welts, swollen limbs, weakened immune systems, stomach aches and fever, according to the report.

But Doherty and eight of the 80 or so relatives across Canada who suffer from the condition found relief after participating in clinical trials at Dalhousie University in Halifax in 2005.

For two months, doctors gave them daily injections of anakinra, a receptor-blocking therapy used for rheumatoid arthritis, and found their symptoms disappeared entirely within hours of receiving the shot.

The family participated in the study, the results of which are to be released this week, because they could not afford the yearly injection cost is $15,000.

Click here to read more on this story from the Daily Gleaner.