A prince of Luxembourg has died at 22 of a genetic illness for which he spent his transient life elevating consciousness.
Prince Frederik, the second cousin of the inheritor to the Luxembourg throne, found at age 14 that he had a mutation in his POLG gene, which is concerned within the replication and restore of DNA. He died on March 1 in Paris, his father, Prince Robert, said in a statement via the POLG Basis.
Estimates range, however roughly one in 10,000 folks are thought to have POLG, or polymerase gamma, illness, in accordance with the United Mitochondrial Illness Basis. It’s a mitochondrial disorder, a bunch of situations that have an effect on how mitochondria in cells produce power. POLG illness impacts a number of organs and may result in seizures and poor coordination, amongst different signs.
“One may examine it to having a defective battery that by no means totally recharges, is in a relentless state of depletion and finally loses energy,” Prince Robert mentioned.
POLG deficiency is a very brutal sort of mitochondrial illness, in accordance with Sir Doug Turnbull, an emeritus professor of neurology at Newcastle College and a member of the POLG Basis’s scientific advisory board. “It’s so relentlessly progressive,” he mentioned, “attacking so many various methods with sadly the identical conclusion.”
Prince Frederik was a founder and the inventive director of the POLG Basis. The group used his DNA for analysis, initiated research and made a short film concerning the illness. Frederick additionally designed a clothes line to lift cash for analysis.
Frederik was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, and grew up in Switzerland. He was a fan of the American tv present “The Workplace,” his father mentioned, and had seen the complete sequence 10 occasions.
In his final days, Frederik was within the hospital with pneumonia and one other severe an infection that left him unable to maneuver, however he might nonetheless look out the window, Prince Robert mentioned.
“By way of the small, mesh-covered window, he noticed the Eiffel Tower glistening with its hourly dance of lights,” his father mentioned. Frederik requested his brother, Alexander, to take {a photograph} of the setting solar.
Frederik was a second cousin of Prince Guillaume, who might be taking up the throne of Luxembourg when his father, Grand Duke Henri, retires in October. Frederik and Guillaume share great-grandparents: Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, who reigned from 1919 to 1964, and her husband, Prince Félix.
“Whenever you’re a child, you could have all these desires, all these aspirations,” Frederik mentioned within the movie produced by his basis. “I’m unsure I understood all the results of POLG after I first acquired identified. It’s extra delicate, the place slowly the world is getting smaller and smaller.”
