Understanding primary immunodeficiency (PI)
Understanding PI
The more you understand about primary immunodeficiency (PI), the better you can live with the disease or support others in your life with PI. Learn more about PI, including the various diagnoses and treatment options.
Learn more about PI
Living with PI
Living with PI
Living with primary immunodeficiency (PI) can be challenging, but you’re not alone—many people with PI lead full and active lives. With the right support and resources, you can, too.
Learn more about living with PI
Get involved
Get involved
Be a hero for those with PI. Change lives by promoting primary immunodeficiency (PI) awareness and taking action in your community through advocacy, donating, volunteering, or fundraising.
Get involved today
Advancing research and clinical care
Advancing research and clinical care
Whether you’re a clinician, researcher, or an individual with primary immunodeficiency (PI), IDF has resources to help you advance the field. Get details on surveys, grants, and clinical trials.
View resource details

Video spotlights SCID treatment basics

January 21, 2021

When parents receive a diagnosis of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) for their baby, they don’t have much time to make a treatment decision. The sooner the baby is treated, the less chance the baby will develop an infection. Because babies with SCID have no functioning immune system, an infection could be life-threatening. Infection also reduces the chances of successful treatment.

Faced with this urgency, parents must decide, with guidance from doctors, the best course of treatment for their baby. The accepted treatment is hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Other options include gene therapy for some types of SCID and Enzyme Replacement Therapy for ADA-SCID.

A recently created video for the SCID Compass program examines the three treatments and how they work. The 2-minute animated video breaks complicated processes down into simple steps to help parents understand the basics of the treatments.