Two of Hearts: Mother and Son Receive Life-Saving Heart Transplants

Within six years, 14-year-old Marques Cain, a wiry boy with dark round eyes and a shy smile, survived two heart transplants – his own and his mother’s.

Marques was only five years old when his mother, Andrea Cain, received a heart transplant at Cleveland Clinic after her own heart failed at age 30. The young nurse and mother was stricken with cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart. Doctors assumed the condition was brought on by a virus that attacks the heart. It would be five years before anyone discovered exactly what had stolen Andrea’s heart function -- right as it was about to take her son’s.

In May 2005, Marques was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy after suffering shortness of breath and fatigue. Further testing determined that Andrea and Marques suffered from Danon’s disease, an extremely rare, dominant, genetic condition passed down from the mother’s X chromosome. In its severest form, Danon’s results in cardiomyopathy and requires a heart transplant. This disease is so rare that there are only 20 documented cases in the world.