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Brooke Greenberg, born January 8, 1993 is a girl from Reisterstown, Maryland who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. Greenberg is about 30 inches (76 cm) tall, weighs about 16 pounds (7.3 kg), and has an estimated mental age of 9 months to 1 year. Greenberg's doctors have termed her condition Syndrome X.
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Birth and early life
Greenberg was born on January 8th, 1993 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, one month prior to her due date, weighing just four pounds (1.8 kg). She was born with anterior hip dislocation, a condition which caused her legs to be swiveled upwards, awkwardly, toward her shoulders; this was corrected surgically. Otherwise, Greenberg appeared to be a normal infant.[1]
In her first six years, Greenberg went through a series of unexplained medical emergencies from which she recovered. She had seven perforated stomach ulcers. She also suffered a seizure. This was followed by what was later diagnosed as a stroke; weeks later, no damage was detected. At age five, Greenberg had a mass in her brain that caused her to sleep for 14 days. The doctors diagnosed the mass as a brain tumor. However, Greenberg later awoke, and physicians found no tumor present. Greenberg's doctor states that the source of her sudden illness remains a mystery.[2]
Unexplained condition
Over the next several years, the Greenbergs visited many specialists, looking for an explanation for their daughter's strange condition. In 2001, when Dateline documented Greenberg, she was still the size of a six-month-old infant, weighing just 13 lb (5.9 kg) at 27 inches (69 cm) tall. The family still had no explanation. Greenberg's mother Melanie said: "They [the specialists] just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinologist. We tried the growth hormone...". The growth hormone treatment had no effect. Howard, Greenberg's father, said: "I mean she did not put on an ounce or she did not grow an inch ... That’s when I knew there was a problem." After the growth hormone administration failed, the doctors, unable to diagnose a known condition, named her condition Syndrome X.
The Greenbergs made many visits to nearby Johns Hopkins Children's Center, and even took Brooke to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, searching for information about their daughter’s condition.[1] When geneticists sequenced Greenberg's DNA, they found that the genes associated with the premature aging diseases were normal, unlike the mutated versions in patients with Werner syndrome and progeria.[3]
Study of Greenberg
In 2006, Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, said that Greenberg's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic disorder or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.[2]
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 9 months to a year old. Brooke can make gestures and recognize sounds, but cannot speak. Her bones, although still abnormally short, are around 10 years old, as determined by the maturity of the cells and structures. And despite being a teenager, she still has her baby teeth, which have an estimated developmental age of about eight years.[3]
References
Notes
- ^ a b A child frozen in time: Unexplained and unusual, 12-year-old Brooke still looks like an infant. By Sara James, NBC News, Oct. 23, 2005
- ^ a b Brown, Bob (2006-06-23). "Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age". Health (ABC News). http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=7880954&page=1. Retrieved 2009-06-27.
- ^ a b Teenage 'baby' may lack master ageing gene, by Andy Coghlan, New Scientist, June 25, 2009
Sources
- Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age: Years Pass, but Brooke Greenberg Remains a Toddler. No One Can Explain How or Why.
- The Curious Case of Brooke Greenberg: 16-Year-Old Has the Body and Mind of a Toddler
- Brooke looks like any other baby girl. But in fact, she's 12 years old
- Doctors Baffled: Girl, 16, Has Body of a Toddler, Still Can't Speak
- The Girl Who Stopped Growing
- Young Girl Has Not Aged In Years
- Rare conditions
- Doctors baffled by mystery condition that sees teenage girl with body of toddler unable to eat or walk
- Forever young
- 16-Year-Old Has the Body of a Baby
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