Around the world, there are not many known cases of this disorder, affecting newborns at a rate of about 1 in 8million. Although Progeria is a genetic disorder, it is not inheritable.
Symptoms:
- The child will have normal appearance in early stage of infancy, symtoms start to surface at the age of 9 to 24 months.
- Growth delays, the child will have short stature, look smaller than children of the same age.
- Distinct facial appearences such as small faces, small jaws, huge heads, malformation of teeth, wrinkled skins, baldness.
- The affected child will develop similar respiratory, arthritic and cardiovascular conditions of an old person at later stage of the disorder.
- The growth of the affected child seems arrest and fast-forward at the same time in the same body. The child with the age of 10 will resemble the body size of a 3-yr-old, but the child will have the appearance of a 80-yr-old.
There is no treatment proven to be effective against this disorder. Sad to say, patients have difficulty living past the age of 13. There is a rare case of a Progeria patient living till the age of 21. Mentally, the affected child will be at his real age. Physically, he is growing at 8 times faster than normal kids!
Most of the affected children die of complications from the disorder, such as heart attack and stroke.
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