Babies with progeria look normal for 6 to 12 months after birth. After that, they develop symptoms characteristic of old age: wrinkled skin, baldness, brittle bones and atherosclerosis, which usually leads to their death between the ages of 5 and 13 years ...

For the first time about the syndrome premature aging spoke 100 years ago. And not surprisingly, such cases occur once in 4-8 million babies. Progeria (from the Greek pro - earlier, gerontos - old man) is an extremely rare genetic disease that accelerates the aging process by about 8-10 times. Simply put, a child ages 10-15 years in one year. An eight-year-old looks 80 years old - with dry, wrinkled skin, a bald head ... These children usually die at the age of 13-14 after several heart attacks and strokes against the background of progressive atherosclerosis, cataracts, glaucoma, complete loss of teeth, etc. And only a few live to 20 years or longer.

Now only 42 cases of people with progeria are known in the world ... Of these, 14 people live in the United States, 5 in Russia, the rest in Europe ...

Among the features of such patients are dwarf growth, low weight (usually not exceeding 15-20 kg), excessive thin skin, poor joint mobility, an underdeveloped chin, a small face in comparison with the size of the head, which gives the person as if a bird's features. Due to the loss of subcutaneous fat, all vessels are visible. The voice is usually high. Mental development corresponds to age. And all these sick children are strikingly similar to each other.

12 year old Seth Cook looks like an 80 year old man. He has no hair, but he has a full range of diseases that affect older people. Therefore, every day the boy takes aspirin and other drugs that thin the blood. With a height of 3 feet (a little over a meter), Seth weighs 25 pounds (11.3 kg).


Oury Barnett was born on April 16, 1996. Already at the age of five, poor Ouri began to have coronary heart disease. Attacks followed one after another. The kid often ended up in the hospital, but he had to be treated with the means that are usually prescribed for older people.


Ouri looked like a stroke survivor: his legs were weak and he began to stumble like a decrepit old man. His eyes faded upper lip did not move, saliva flowed, speech became illegible.


Ouri's mother did a lot to convey to people her experience and her observations of the unfortunate child. From the age of three, the baby was taken to the shooting of television programs and scientific conferences. The only condition that the mother set for sensational journalists was that they should not write that the baby was dying of progeria.


The most famous case of progeria described in the Russian press is the story of Alvydas Gudelauskas, who suddenly began to age at the age of 20. Literally in a matter of months, Alvidas turned into a 60-year-old man before our eyes. And only after plastic surgery did he begin to look like a mature man. In the photo on the left - this is how he looked before the operation, on the right - after. Now Alvydas is only 32 years old.

Until recently, doctors could not determine the cause of the disease. And only recently, American researchers discovered that only a single mutation is the cause of "childish old age" or Hutchinson-Gilford progeria.

According to the director of the National Institute for Genome Research Francis Collins (Francis Collins), who led the study, this disease is not hereditary. A point mutation - when only one nucleotide is changed in a DNA molecule - occurs anew in each patient. People suffering from progeria die mainly from precisely those ailments that are characteristic of old age. A mutated form of the LMNA gene has now been found to cause progeria.

Ali Hussein Khan, who lives in India, looks like an ancient old man, but in fact he is very young - he is only 14 years old! A rare disease has turned a teenager into a pensioner and has already claimed the lives of his siblings.

In 1983, the first child was born in the family of Nabi and Razia from the state of Bihar (India). It was a girl - their daughter Rehana. Parents carefully monitored the health of the baby and immediately noticed that in the second year of life something wrong began to happen to her: the girl stopped getting up on her legs and could not eat.

Concerned parents took Rehan to the local doctor, but he did not understand what was wrong with the girl and sent the family back home. In 1987, a child appeared in the family of Razia and Nabi again. This time the son, but over time, he began to show signs of a strange illness of his sister. The parents came to the same doctor, but he told them that he himself was confused and could not make a diagnosis, and, accordingly, could not help in any way.

Over the next few years, the couple had four more children, but they all suffered from a mysterious disease. As they grew older, their ugliness became obvious: they looked not like ordinary children, but like real old people. Parents of little elderly people did not understand what was happening to their children.

It wasn't until 1995 that a doctor who examined the children was able to make a correct diagnosis. Sons and daughters in this family suffer from a genetic disease that is considered very rare. It is called progeria, and the word itself comes from the Greek - old man. This disease causes a number of pathological changes characteristic of the aging process, which usually end in death.

So, in 2004, two girls died in this family, who had just turned 15 and 12 years old. Literally after them, a terrible disease claimed the lives of 24-year-old Rehana and her 22-year-old brother Ikramul. Now the family has only one child, Ali Hussain Khan. Now he is 14 years old, but he knows that he could die at any moment.

Have you ever met the 26th summer child? If not, then get acquainted - Jerly Lyngdoh - the oldest child on the planet, the son of a simple farming family from Meghalaya, North India For his age, the young man weighs only 11 kg (22 pounds). Height 84 centimeters. Jaley's behavior corresponds to a 2-year-old kid. The only thing that can tell us about his age is his teeth. Jaley's teeth are quite appropriate for his age. Also, a distinctive feature is the reaction, his gestures, facial expressions - all this defines a 26-year-old boy in him. Not a single doctor knows how to help the "baby" in order to heal him, to return to him the possibility of physical and mental development. According to doctors, Jaley suffers from a rare pituitary disease called "pan-hypo pituitarism", which blocks the guy's growth hormones.

A seven-year-old English girl suffers from a rare disease - progeria. This is the second case in the country, which is reported by the British media within a month. The Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome has changed the run of time for the baby - it rushes fast for her, and the girl is aging 8 times faster than ordinary people. The medical prognosis is disappointing, but the child, who does not know about it, smiles kindly at those around him.

Who will help little Ashanti Elliot-Smith? The tragedy of the Elliot-Smith family began shortly after the birth of their first child, Ashanti's daughter. She was born absolutely healthy, but very soon large age spots appeared on her stomach. The doctors' diagnosis sounded like a sentence - childhood progeria or Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome, a rare disease that manifests itself in one child in several million. The disease is so rare that doctors have described almost all cases of this disease of recent times.

The disease begins in infancy with the appearance of large age spots- like Ashanti Elliott-Smith. Then the children are overcome by senile ailments. They develop diseases of the heart, blood vessels, diabetes, hair and teeth fall out, disappears subcutaneous fat. The bones become brittle, the skin becomes wrinkled, and the body becomes hunched over. Growth stops at around 120 cm. The longest-lived among children with progeria is a resident of London, who is now 20 years old, but he lived so long only thanks to the incredible care of his parents.

Incredible Facts

This 4-year-old boy from Bangladesh looks like an 80-year-old man due to a rare disease.

Looking at Bayezid Hossein(Bayezid Hossain) from Bangladesh, you will see a flabby face, sunken eyes and flabby skin, he suffers from joint pain, he has difficulty urinating and weak, decayed teeth.

People from the community where he lives try to stay away from him, and children are afraid to play with him, despite the fact that he has above average intelligence.

Children's progeria (photo)

Bayezid suffers from progeria - a disease in which the body ages eight times faster than normal. This disorder was taken as a basis in the book by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", in which the hero is born an old man and gets younger every day.

People with progeria usually die of a heart attack or stroke at an average age of 13 years.

Bayezid also suffers from flaccid skin syndrome or chalazodermia, a rare connective tissue disorder in which the skin hangs down in folds.

Tripti Khatun(Tripti Khatun), the 18-year-old mother of the boy, said she was surprised at how smart her son is, but she was very upset by his unusual appearance.

According to her, Bayezid only learned to walk at the age of 3, but he had all his teeth by 3 months.

Despite the anomalous physical development, he is well developed mentally, can hold a conversation, is well informed and has good intuition for his age.

When Bayezid was born in 2012, his parents were shocked by his appearance.

“He looked like an alien and it was heartbreaking”, - told his mother Tripiti.

The doctors had no idea what to do and said they had never experienced anything like it.

News of the unusual child quickly spread throughout the village, and although everyone wanted to see the unusual boy, the family did not receive support from the locals.

People gossiped behind the couple's back as the boy's parents are related to each other cousin and sister. Close marriages are not uncommon in rural Bangladesh and the couple got married at the age of 13.

As Bayezid matured, his personality and body developed much faster than other children in the village.

“He is very stubborn, knows what he wants, and becomes very impatient. But he loves to play, smart and witty". Bayezid does not go to school, but loves to play ball, draw, and take apart toys to put them back together.

The boy's parents turned to doctors, shamans, monks, but nothing changed, and the situation worsened every day.

progeria disease

Progeria is premature aging disease in which children begin to age rapidly from an early age. This is a genetic disorder that is still not fully understood. Although it is known that the cause is an abnormal protein, scientists cannot explain the mechanism of this disorder.

Currently, the world knows about 74 known cases of progeria. It occurs in about 1 in 4 to 8 million newborns. Babies with Progeria look healthy at birth, but around the age of 10-24 months, signs of accelerated aging begin to show.

Signs of progeria may include:

growth disorder

loss of adipose tissue

alopecia

skin aging

Stiffness in the joints

dislocation of the hip

atherosclerosis (heart disease)

· stroke

Nearly all patients with Progeria die of heart disease, and children with Progeria often suffer from high blood pressure, stroke, angina, and heart failure.

Progeria is one of the rarest genetic diseases. This disease leads to premature death due to accelerated aging. Currently, a little more than forty cases of progeria have been recorded worldwide. This disease is perceived more as a phenomenon than a disease.

Reasons for the development of the disease

So far, no one has been able to explain with sufficient accuracy and persuasiveness which of the factors influence the appearance of progeria in a particular person. Scientists have suggested that the cause of the development of this disease is a genetic mutation in the lamin protein, which provokes accelerated aging of the body. A person has to age seven times faster. And an absolutely young man, almost a child, with his bulging eyes, protruding large ears, swollen veins on a bald skull, seems like a deep old man.

Figuratively speaking, in these patients the age is not human, but canine. They live and grow old according to dog time. And then they die from a banal heart attack - from old age, even though they are not even twenty.

Varieties of the disease

Progeria has several forms of development. It is customary to distinguish between a children's variety of progeria and diagnose Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome, as well as adult progeria - with Werner's syndrome. The most severe course is characterized by progeria, which appears in a small child. A sick kid is unlikely to survive even to the age of twelve.

Symptoms of childhood progeria

At first, a newborn child who is sick with progeria is no different from a healthy one. But at the age of one or two years, the disease makes itself felt. The first symptoms appear:

• hair starts to fall out
• wrinkled skin;
• baby stops growing.

As a result, the child dies from a heart attack or other cardiovascular diseases. It is curious that a child who is ill with this terrible disease is in no way inferior to healthy children in terms of mental development. Moreover, a person with progeria is usually very smart and talented. The weight of sick children usually does not exceed twenty kilograms, height - no more than one meter.

As the signs of aging are visible, the patient's muscles atrophy, dystrophy of the teeth occurs, and the hairline gradually disappears from the head. In addition, pathological changes in the joints and skeleton are observed. The bones become brittle, the skin - pronounced wrinkling, the body becomes twisted and hunched. The patient is diagnosed with problems with the cardiovascular system. Fat metabolism is disturbed, atherosclerosis is formed.