It wasn't that long ago that Rachel Dib, a North Carolina mother of three children, was so sick with lupus she struggled to get out of bed to care for her kids.
She used a walker to move on a bad day and a cane on a good day. Her health and quality of life are drastically improved thanks to a clinical trial at UNC School of Medicine. She received CAR T-cell therapy - a former of genetic engineering first used at UNC to treat cancer.
Her successful results are the focus of a new story just released by journalists with Investigative TV +.
Struggle to Find Relief
Doctors diagnosed Dib with lupus when she was a sophomore in college. It attacked her joints, her breathing and at times her memory. "It got so bad, I had gaps in my memory," she explained. "My husband just said the other day that I was bedridden in 2012, he said he would come home from work and help me eat, and do everything, because I could not care for myself, but I have no memory of it."
Saira Z. Sheikh, MD
Dib suffered with joint pain, hip pain, plus knee pain that was so severe her knees buckled. To find relief, she tried just about every treatment possible, pills, infusions. Some would work, but never long enough.
The Choice that Changed Her Life
About five years ago, Dib's husband received a military transfer to North Carolina. While searching for a new doctor off post, she found Dr. Saira Sheikh's name among a list of physicians at UNC Health. The young mother immediately noticed Dr. Sheikh specialized in treating women with lupus, so she quickly signed up to get an appointment after giving birth to her second child.
"The first time I met Dr. Sheikh, she mentioned she did clinical studies," said Dib. "I was open to trying something new, since through the years, I had tried just about everything else."
In 2024, Dib lined up to receive CAR-T Cell Therapy for treatment of lupus with Dr. Sheikh.
UNC's Dr. Sheikh is among only a handful of physicians in the world using the method for treatment of autoimmune diseases like lupus.
Life-Changing Results
Dib received her super cells on August 24, 2024. Today, she says she is a new person. Her brain fog is gone. Her breathing issues are gone. She can get up every morning and help her three children get ready for the day. She's an active mom, again.
"You can get your life back with this," she says. "We just went on vacation, I could go-go-go, we took the kid to four different parks, with my lupus, I could not have done that."
