Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

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Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

Emory Voice Center

Making a joyful noise: Joey finds his ‘real voice’

Emory Voice Center patient Joey Finley

Emory Voice Center patient Joey Finley

Last year, seven-year-old Joey Finley sang Christmas carols for the first time in his life. For most parents, this would be uneventful, but for Joey’s mom, Melanie, it was a breakthrough.

Joey was literally silenced all these years because of a rare disease called recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP). The disease allows tumors to grow in the respiratory tract, and is caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV). Currently there are 20,000 active cases in the United States.

Although the tumors mostly occur in the larynx on and around the vocal cords, these growths may spread downward and affect the trachea, bronchi and sometimes the lungs, obstructing breathing. RRP papillomas are the same tumors that cause cervical cancer. There is no cure for RRP. And left untreated, the lesions may grow and cause suffocation and death.

Initially, doctors confused Joey’s RRP symptoms with pediatric GERD or acid reflux disease. Since Joey was two months old, he’s been in and out of hospitals, OR’s and doctor’s offices, and had more than 60 surgeries to remove the tumors on his vocal chords.

RRP adversely affected Joey’s speech. He began compensating for the “frogs” as he called them, by using other vocal muscles to talk.

When Joey met Edie Hapner, PhD, a speech pathologist at the Emory Voice Center, she says he sounded “like a little old man.” His voice was very raspy like that of a 60-year-old smoker.

After several sessions with his speech therapist, Joey is a normal sounding child. Joey now sings in the school chorus and takes gymnastics and swimming lessons. It’s hard to imagine these activities for a child that not so long ago had trouble breathing because of HPV tumors blocking his airways.

Read more about Joey’s journey to ‘find his voice’ and hear him speak in the new issue of Emory Health magazine.

Listen to Emory patient Karon Schindler recount her experience at the Voice Center.

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