 |
Brooke GreenbergAmerican woman suffering from a rare disease
Date of Birth: 08.01.1993
Country:  USA |
Content:
Brooke Greenberg: A Life of Medical Mystery
Brooke Greenberg, an American woman from Reisterstown, Maryland, has been suffering from a rare and unknown condition, which has left her physically and mentally resembling a young child. Despite being in her twenties, Brooke stands at just 76 cm tall and weighs around 7.3 kg, with her mental development equivalent to that of a 9-12 month old baby.
A Mysterious Condition
Brooke's condition, which doctors have called "Syndrome X," has puzzled medical professionals. She was born on January 8, 1993, via cesarean section at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Despite being born four weeks premature and weighing only 1.8 kg, Brooke initially appeared to be a normal infant. However, over the first six years of her life, she experienced a series of acute illnesses, from which she miraculously recovered. She had seven instances of stomach ulcer perforation, followed by a seizure that led to a diagnosis of a stroke. However, weeks later, doctors found no evidence of any damage. At the age of five, an abnormal growth was discovered in Brooke's brain, causing her to enter a 14-day coma. However, when she woke up, the tumor had disappeared.
A Medical Mystery
Brooke's pediatrician, Dr. Lawrence Pakula, stated that the cause of her sudden illnesses remains a mystery to doctors. During an interview on a talk show, Brooke's father revealed that she stopped growing when she was four and a half years old. Despite numerous visits to specialists and genetic testing, no known genetic or chromosomal defects have been found in Brooke. In 2001, when her story was featured on "Dateline NBC," Brooke still resembled a six-month-old baby, weighing 5.9 kg and measuring 69 cm in height. Her family continues to hope that one day the mystery of Brooke's condition will be solved.
Seeking Answers
The Greenbergs have sought medical advice from renowned institutions such as Johns Hopkins Children's Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, but genetic testing revealed that Brooke's genes related to premature aging were normal, unlike those of patients with progeria or Werner syndrome. In 2006, Dr. Richard Walker, an endocrine physiologist at the University of South Florida Medical School, explained that Brooke's body represents a collection of independently developing parts rather than a unified whole, but specialists still cannot explain why this occurs. While Brooke's mental development remains at the level of a one-year-old, her bones correspond to a ten-year-old, and her baby teeth have yet to fall out, similar to an eight-year-old child. Different parts of her body develop at different rates, as if they were separate entities. Walker believes that Brooke's condition provides doctors with a unique opportunity to understand the aging process. He also suggests that her condition may be caused by the failure of key controlling genes. Currently, two similar cases are known to science - Gabrielle Williams from Montana, who was born in 2004 and still resembles an infant in size, and Nicky Freeman from Australia, who was born in 1970 but continues to look like a ten-year-old boy.
