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THE adoring parents of a “miracle” baby are slowly adjusting to life without their perfect little girl.

Less than four months ago Esmae-Rose Bailey was fit and eagerly anticipating her first day at school.

But at the start of the summer holidays, the four-year-old contracted chicken pox and within hours developed obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), physical tics, anxiety and underwent a personality change.

A new brain imaging study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows for the first time that brain inflammation is significantly elevated – more than 30 per cent higher – in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) than in people without the condition. Published in JAMA Psychiatry, the study provides compelling evidence for a new potential direction for treating this anxiety disorder, which can be debilitating for people who experience it.

Young Brandon was always a happy, bright and content child, his parents say, so when he would get sick with a strep throat and fever three years in a row — always in February and always followed days later with distressingly unhappy behavior — his parents knew something was wrong.

A Tilbury mother, whose two sons were diagnosed with PANDAS, has been connecting with local families in need of support. Jennifer Ducharme says her experience with the disorder began when her eldest son Nathan June woke up with a stutter one morning at the age of two and a half. Ducharme says, eventually, he couldn’t make noise at all.

All loving parents work hard to protect their children. Although we want to resist the urge to place our kids in “bubbles” alienated from any form of difficulty, we do want to keep them from those things that could be particularly harmful and bring undue suffering. Most of the dangers we worry about are dangers “out there,” but what if the danger a child needs to be protected from is his or her own immune system?

Carson Spears was just like the other pupils in kindergarten. The bubbly little boy loved to play outside and had plenty of friends. Then, Carson came down with his first case of strep throat.

Our son already had a rare, life-changing condition. Then came our daughter’s diagnosis.

In 2014, our son Ethan was diagnosed with a rare condition called paediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infections, known by the acronym Pandas. The following year, our daughter, Autumn, was diagnosed with a different, but also rare, condition known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (also referred to as DiGeorge syndrome or VCFS). We knew nothing about either condition before diagnosis and now probably know more about both conditions than most doctors in the country.