Medical experts claim nine-year-old Lexie McConnell died after being given a "massive" dose of steroids that were not thoroughly tested on children.

Two specialists have criticised the treatment given to Lexie and their evidence - published here for the first time - will be used to try to force a public inquiry six years after her death.

It is the first time consultants have published reports supporting Lexie's parents, Art and Victoria.

Within the next 48 hours, the House of Commons health select committee will decide whether to launch an inquiry into Lexie's case. She died after going down with chicken pox when her immune system was weakened.

Two leading consultants believe it is very likely the high doses of steroids destroyed her immune system and led to her death from chicken-pox.

Dr Leo Stimmler, consultant paediatrician and neo-natologist at Guy's Hospital in London, said: "I think it is highly likely that this child's fatal chicken pox infection was due to the high dose of Prednisolone of which she was being treated."

He said adults should normally receive between 20mg and 30mg for the first few days of treatment before reducing the dosage. Only in severe cases, he believes, should it go up to 60mg for adults. The safety of the steroids on children has been brought into question in a specialist medical text which states the safety of the steroids had 'not been established in children' before Lexie's death in 1992.

And Prof Gordon Dutton, a consultant ophthalmologist in Glasgow, said in his report that he would not have used steroids in her case.

A spokesman for Oxfordshire Health Authority said: "It was a tragic death. Our view is that it was completely unpredictable - it was a very rare reaction. Nobody knew she was exposed to chicken pox.

"Lexie was on steroids which lowered her resistance to infections when she caught chicken pox. No-one knew that she had been exposed to it, and the chicken pox did not follow a normal course."

The health authority says it has reports which refute the views expressed by Dr Stimmler and Prof Dutton.

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