“Syndrome X”– the real X File case

 People are dreaming about immortality, extended youth and they are many ways trying to stop their aging. Usually people try to look younger than they really are. Even myself, I like to hear that I look 25 or even I have to proof my age when buying alcoholic drinks. But everything has its own borders and our lives, evolution and aging. Maybe teenagers are proud to looking adult due to the social status but straight after turning 20 this wish to older changes to look younger. People often doesn’t consider their image, looking young doesn’t always mean to looking good, healthy and in a career can be a minus point. Youth is generally connected with lack of experiences, wisdom and general behavior ethics.  

Sometimes happens that parents are thinking about their grown up children and they remember the time their children were toddlers as the luckiest time in their life. But if the child really gets trapped in time and keeps being a toddler just “forever”. Imagine if the life of parents of the child which should be an “eternal” toddler or baby, how the life should be? Since the aging is a natural process the expectation is that the child in adulthood will be support for his/her old parents in the future.

And yet mysteries (miracles?) happen and around a world there are living about half a dozen children who are in fact adults trapped in time.  Their condition is still unexplainable and some scientists believe that these children are caring the key of eternal youth, immortality or some kind of magic elixir or cure to our diseases. Since there is not yet know an example of these strange patients who died, scientists are puzzled since they cannot provide any information about the expected life length to the patients’ parents or predict any possible complications and conditions to the future.

Generally the people trapped in time appears as children/toddlers even they are in the age of 20 and up (except one case the girl Gabby appearing as a baby she was born 2004, but probably she has the same future as the older).

It sounds incredible to imagine a 20-years old woman not able to talk, walk or feeding herself or a man in his forties looking 10 years old boy.

There two groups of people trapped in time: those who never get over the toddler/baby stage and those whose progress is slow and aging stops in age 8-10 usually followed by decreasing the already learned motoric and mental skills.

In some cases scientist and especially doctor Richard Walker, PhD in endocrine physiology of the University Of South Florida College Of Medicine, found some kind of explanation and moderate treatment to avoid any possible heart or brain episodes and increasing immunity since the tiny bodies of these patients are quiet weak.

This medical condition is so tricky that it is not appear in any test. The doctors have to run whole hormone analysis and check all the volume of genes and its chromosomes and an individual has thousands of genes. And imagine that just one single missing piece of chromosome part or its defect or translocation can cause such a condition.

Another mystery of these people is that their conditions are individual and also the results of gene tests are different.

Maria Audient do Nescient, woman born in may 1981who lives in the town of Caucaia, Brazil is suffering of a genetically caused lack of the most hormones necessary to developing of the individual. That caused her condition that she stopped growing after nine months and she is now looking like a toddler. However she developed some motoric and communication skills; she can walk and even help her mother with basic housekeeping.  Since here condition is according to PhD Walker mainly caused by lack of hormones some hormone treatments are provided to her to improve her condition and increase her motoric and communication skills.

Another child without aging is Gabby Williams in age of 9 appears to be 1-2 years old, nearly blind with just several communication skills not able to walk, feet herself or use a bathroom she is still in the stage of a baby. Doctor Walker did her gene analysis and found some kind of chromosome dislocation however there are no answers to question about Gabby’s future, how to treat here etc. But there are some findings to work with.

Almost whole medical mystery is so call Benjamin Button boy/middle age man Nicky Freeman from Australia, born 1970. His is in stage of 10 year old boy. He is not able to walk and talk after a traumatic unnecessary surgery, which was a blind shot try to help his condition since his brain was swelling and collecting a large volume of brain liquid. His life is hanging also on the Doctor Walker’s tests and research.

And the most puzzling and mysterious of all these patients is Brooke Greenberg, who was born in 1993 and here condition is called “Syndrome X”.  She is still the size of infant/toddler about 6kg and 80cm tall. Doctor Richard Walker said that Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of synchronization. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic disorder or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why. In 2009, Walker said: "There've been very minimal changes in Brooke's brain … Various parts of her body, rather than all being at the same stage, seem to be disconnected." Walker noted that Greenberg's brain, for example, is not much more mature than that of a newborn infant. He estimates her mental age at around nine months to a year old. Brooke can make gestures and recognize sounds, but cannot speak. Her bones are like those of a ten-year-old, and she still has her baby teeth, which have an estimated developmental age of about eight years.

"We think that Brooke's condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of aging. Different parts of her body are developing at different rates, as if they were not a unit but parts of separate organisms," Walker explains. Dr. Walker believes that the condition resulted from a failure of central control genes but not yet discovered any specific abnormality.

These stories are strange and somehow scary; they are a good example that we do not need to much sci-fi since we have mysteries around us.

 

In these pics is Maria Audien in the age of 31

 

This is 40 years old Nicky Freeman

 

And Brooke Greenberg the biggest medical mystery

20years old Brook

 

See also

 

 

Man-eating Trees

You can be a vegetarian to read this. I will not speak about what we are eating but what might be able to eat us.

There are many myths and legends about plants eating meat. Well known plants eating living organisms could also be a decoration of our homes or gardens. These decorative plans usually eat insects or small spiders. But imagine that there should be a plant which should be able to “swallow” a human being. Jokes? Well as once referred to myths and legends I will continue.

Since 19^th century there are reports about of various legendary carnivorous plants that are large enough to kill and consume a person or a large animal. These were called man-eating trees.

The earliest report of a man-eating tree was written by Edmund Spencer for the New York World on 26 April 1874. In the article was described that a German scientist Karl Liche witnessed a human sacrifice to a man-eating tree during some local ritual in Madagascar. This story was picked up by many other newspapers that time. Later an announcement came out saying that the story was false but who knows exactly what happened? The tree was given further publicity by the book by former Governor of Michigan Chase Osborn:” Madagascar, Land of the Man-eating Tree”.  Osborn claimed that both the tribes and missionaries on Madagascar knew about that tree.

Another man-eating tree was “found” in place called “Nubia”. Phil Robinson wrote in his tales about his uncle’s travels around the world that ended up in “Nubia” and described the plant:

“This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humors all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs ; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ; upon even man himself when, an infrequent prey, the savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh foot-wounding sword-grass of the glade, to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang plumb down among the wondrous foliage. And such fruit! Glorious golden ovals, great honey drops, swelling by their own weight into pear-shaped translucencies. The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green.”

Scary isn’t it? The story continues in describing how the tree captured and ate one of the crew members and how the uncle tried to shoot at the tree and fight it with a knife and that the tree fought back.

There is a lot of drama in Robinson’s story and by a science there is a possibility that a carnivorous plant in this case tree could trap a bigger prey, since the plants could be bigger and stronger that time. But the fact that the tree could fight back is really a fiction. Even there are some plants able to “defend” themselves by shrinking or leaking a venom liquid, there is no fight. As soon the tree could fight it shouldn’t be a tree but an animal (bug, insect, something like that).

Let’s put in that there are also man-eating tree legends in Africa and South America and they are a legend of a same kind such as American Big Foot.

What about the science and its opinion about man eating trees?

The carnivorous plant with the largest known traps is probably Nepenthes rajah, which produces pitchers up to 38 cm (15 in) tall with a volume of up to 3.5 liters and this plant can trap even small mammals. Then we can go on and think if these plants should be possible to be cultivated into man eating trees or in the past they could grow so big to be able to eat a human.

Another story which is real and not so old could be connected with the legend. But in this case the man is eaten by the “tree” from inside. We are talking about Epidermodysplasia verruciformis (also called Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia). It is named after the physicians who first documented it, Felix Lewandowsky and Wilhelm Lutz.

It is an extremely rare autosomal recessive genetic hereditary skin disorder associated with a high risk of carcinoma of the skin. It is characterized by abnormal susceptibility to human papillomaviruses (HPVs) of the skin. The resulting uncontrolled HPV infections result in the growth of scaly macules and papules, particularly on the hands and feet. In fact the patients arms and legs begin to look like tree limbs or roots. The condition can be devastating and paralyzing the patient.  

The condition usually has an onset of between the ages of 1–20but can occasionally present in middle-age. The cause of the condition is chromosome mutation ad there is no serious treatment for this disease. Several treatments have been suggested, even surgery, and have been more than less effective but still there haven’t been any full recovery yet known. Most important is the education of the patient, early diagnosis and excision of the tumoral lesions take preference to prevent the development of cutaneous tumors.

One of the most terrifying cases of this disease is described in following story below. Warning: If you are sensitive don’t watch it, some pictures are really tough. See the story of the “treeman”: