An extremely rare genetic condition prohibits babies from growing or from aging. One eight year old child, Gabby Williams, weighs eleven points and is cared for like a newborn, Chris Weller reports from Yahoo! Health. This story was also covered on ABC news.
Only a small group of people in the entire world share this condition. There is a 29-year-old Florida man with the body of a ten year old and there is a woman in Brazil, aged 31, who has the body of a two-year-old. Modern medicine has not been able to determine a cause for this condition, but further research may allow scientists to overcome "the inertia of aging," in which the body’s rate of change slows to a negligible amount.
What doctors would like to know is a method to allow the human body to develop into the twenties and then arrest further aging, creating a kind of immortality.
One of the factors preventing humans from living forever involves telomeres, the tips at the end of chromosomes. As cells replace themselves repeatedly, these ends got worn and frayed, ultimately losing the ability to replicate themselves. If the illness were fully understood and aging was arrested, then old age
would lack greater risk for cancer, disease and illness. Humans could remain physically and mentally able.
Other factors cause teleomeres to fray and age, including oxidative stress, glycation and chronological age. In Gabby Williams case, doctors are unable to predict how long they believe she will live.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/girl-ages-unravel-secret-eternal-youth/story?id=19974247
Only a small group of people in the entire world share this condition. There is a 29-year-old Florida man with the body of a ten year old and there is a woman in Brazil, aged 31, who has the body of a two-year-old. Modern medicine has not been able to determine a cause for this condition, but further research may allow scientists to overcome "the inertia of aging," in which the body’s rate of change slows to a negligible amount.
What doctors would like to know is a method to allow the human body to develop into the twenties and then arrest further aging, creating a kind of immortality.
One of the factors preventing humans from living forever involves telomeres, the tips at the end of chromosomes. As cells replace themselves repeatedly, these ends got worn and frayed, ultimately losing the ability to replicate themselves. If the illness were fully understood and aging was arrested, then old age
would lack greater risk for cancer, disease and illness. Humans could remain physically and mentally able.
Other factors cause teleomeres to fray and age, including oxidative stress, glycation and chronological age. In Gabby Williams case, doctors are unable to predict how long they believe she will live.
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