 Jarko Stanicev had been suffering from seizures and other debilitating symptoms for years. The cause of his illness eluded his doctors. He had had at least 10 to 12 years of symptoms, so he had experienced hearing loss for three years and then recurrent meningitis for easily 10 years. He had had over 20 different spinal taps and the symptoms have resulted in a profound impairment on his activities of daily living. He was profoundly fatigued, his endurance was totally drained, he didn't feel like going out, he couldn't work, he couldn't do anything. Almost 30 attacks in 10 years, each time, vorus and vorus. He was very scared when all this started, taking with ambulance in the hospital, not knowing when my husband is going to have an next flare, an attack, and if he is going to get out of the hospital or not. Desperate for an answer, Jarko turned to the Undiagnosed Diseases program at the National Institutes of Health. The mission of this team is to take on medical mysteries that no one else can solve. So those patients have been through laboratory testing, physical examinations, histories, electrophysiological testing, imaging, all those things, and we haven't had a diagnosis. Diagnosing rare diseases has been a challenge, but in recent years, genome research has provided a new tool. A person's physiological makeup is determined by their genes. Genomes are part of your DNA, which is in every cell of the human body. Researchers are now using genetic data to diagnose diseases, diagnoses that used to be beyond medical science. The sequencing of the human genome has given us a place to go when other avenues, classic avenues of medicine have failed us. And that's one of the things our program does is kind of think outside of the box in terms of looking for alternative diagnoses. If a gene is damaged or parts of it are missing, it can cause disease. Scientists use the map of the human genome to locate these abnormal genes. They can zero in on the location by using markers along the genome. Every new discovery is stored in a public database, constantly improving our understanding of the human genome. We always find many, many different mutations, and we have to rank them and try to determine which ones to go after as the cause of the patient's symptoms. A team of specialists reviewed Jarco's symptoms. And in the May of 2010, we had the first episode of the septic meningitis followed by last episode in January 2017. During that admission in April here, you had a spinal tap, and can you tell us how many cells there were or what it was characterized by? It was abnormal, definitely the protein was elevated, the MRI of the brain was normal. So we're looking for inflammatory issues or diagnoses including multiple sclerosis. It became clear to us that he really had this presentation that was very atypical for an infection. And we began thinking, could this be actually a disorder more of unregulated and checked inflammation rather than an inflammation as a response of infectious process? And it was about mid-week when I got an email and a phone call asking if I could come by and see him because the patients that I see often have certain mutations in their body that can cause dysregulation of their inflammatory system, where it can look for all intents and purposes like an actual bacterial meningitis, but it keeps happening. Jarco's doctors did genetic testing on him, then scoured the database and found what they were looking for. When we did our genetic analysis, we found that he had a mutation in NLRP3 and that's part of an inflammatory zone that causes this type of disorder, but very, very rarely. With the right hand, to this movement, it's this. To put everything together is really a complete diagnosis and sometimes carries a treatment as well. And that doesn't happen real often, but we have had many, many successes. Jarco was treated with a drug that addressed the inflammation and within hours they noticed a dramatic improvement. He received medication around noon and six hours after, he stood up walking without a pain. Let me have you stand up. He started hearing better, he started thinking better, you know, he was seeing better, he was almost pain-free. He hasn't had any more fevers, his body aches and joint pains are improved. He's going to help shorten the journey of patients with rare diseases from decades to a relatively short period of time. So he's going to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Thank you so much for coming, sir. Thank you. And it's great to see you standing and walking and thank you. Nice job taking care of your husband, by the way. Thank you. I think, you know, that's a lesson for all of us, really. I just received my life back. I live again. Before that is the question, when I will finish the work, I'm just gone. Now I have life.