This case happened to a South African woman. She was about to become a mother. For the 20-year-old, it was her first pregnancy and she was very nervous. But before the big event, the mother-to-be felt fine and didn’t complain about anything.
It was time for a new lifeWhen the time of delivery came, one surprise began to replace another, even more shocking. The contractions began, and the young woman’s family called an ambulance. It was delayed for some unknown reason.
The contractions were very strong. It looked as if the birth would not begin in the hospital setting. And so it happened. The pregnant woman’s grandmother and other women who were in the house began to help the woman in labor.
Despite the absence of medics, the birth proceeded without much of a problem, nothing to alarm those present. At last it was over and the newborn baby was born. The baby looked strange. Her face was too wrinkled, covered with deep wrinkles, like an old woman’s. Her tiny hands, too, were riddled with creases and wrinkles.
It was decided that the newborn and her mother should be taken to the doctors. The relatives went to their neighbors who had a car. Soon the mother and her newborn daughter were taken to the clinic. Doctors carefully examined the baby girl, who looked like her grandmother, and diagnosed her.
What was the baby’s problem
It turned out that the poor child had suffered from birth with a congenital genetic disease that could not be cured. The girl had progeria, or Getchinson-Gilford syndrome.
The little girl was unlucky: thin skin covered with coarse wrinkles, decreased cell size of muscles and other organs, tissue dysfunction – all this indicated a severe form of the disease. Children with this disease grow very slowly.
There are few examples of people with this symptom, but still there are.
They even made a feature film about one of them, and then named the disease after him. Now progeria is also called Benjamin Button’s disease. This is a character in the movie who also suffered from Gutchinson-Gilford syndrome.
A grandmother, who was present at the birth and assisted the woman in labor, noticed that the baby did not scream immediately after birth, as newborn babies usually do, did not cry, but only made strange breaths.
The media has already mentioned cases of children born with this syndrome. Usually carriers of the disease do not live to adulthood, and die in adolescence. The cause of the lethal outcome is atherosclerosis. There are currently 132 people in the world with progeria.