DOCTORS have described a two-year-old North-East girl as a walking miracle.

Specialists can offer no explanation as to why Lucia Castro-Quroga, from Lanchester, County Durham, is one of a handful of people to survive an extremely rare and "incurable" kidney condition.

By this point in her life, Lucia should at the very least have been undergoing a kidney transplant.

But, in what has been described as a medical miracle, she has started to get better.

She suffers from a condition called diffuse mesangial sclerosis (DMS), a childhood disease that manifests itself soon after birth.

Patients rapidly move from normality to needing dialysis and a transplant, but Lucia is one of only a few children in the world not to go into renal failure.

Specialists at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary say they are at a loss to know why Lucia's condition appears to be improving.

Dr Nadeem Moghal, head of the hospital's department of paediatric nephrology, said: "We can use the word miracle.

"Only the odd one or two don't appear to go into kidney failure, and Lucia is one of those.

"It is not right to say she has been cured - we will continue to monitor her over the coming months and years to see she remains stable - but she was on her way to dialysis and a kidney transplant, and for some reason we don't understand she appears to have got better."

Lucia's parents, Victor and Paula, are elated at her progress.

Chilean-born Mr Castro-Quiroga, 33, said: "I don't know why Lucia should have been spared. Sometimes I think it is better not to try and find the answer. I can say that I feel very lucky."