We can't help but wonder how many more steps our daughter, 6, will take, says mother of six-year-old girl with muscle wasting disease that is slowly destroying her mobility Anouk Howes has a genetic condition called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) The condition affects the muscles, causing progressive wasting and weakness Campaigners want SMA included in newborn tests to improve early diagnosis By Luisa Metcalfe Published: 20:46 EDT, 3 June 2024 | Updated: 20:48 EDT, 3 June 2024 e-mail View comments Anouk Howes loves swinging fearlessly from climbing frames and playing mummies and babies with her one-year-old brother Willem. Independent and sassy, the six-year-old is 'hardly a wallflower', laughs her mother Sophie, 35, who is PA to a sculptor. Yet when Sophie and her husband, Mike, 37, chief executive of a tech company, from Wiltshire, watch Anouk walk around the house, they can't help but wonder how many more steps she'll be able to take.
Anouk has a genetic condition, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which affects the muscles, causing progressive wasting and weakness. They have a wheelchair which Anouk doesn't yet use, but Sophie and Mike know that will change sometime soon. Anouk Howes, six, with her mother Sophie, father Dan and brother Willem, who has been diagnosed with SMA, a genetic condition which affects the muscles, causing progressive wasting and weakness Children are born with SMA if both parents have a faulty gene that causes the condition — one in 40 is a c.
