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World|health|December 18, 2019 / 12:50 PM
Toddler is world’s only sufferer of rare ‘Benjamin Button’-like disease

AKIPRESS.COM - A 2-year-old UK girl stunned the medical community after she became the world’s lone sufferer of “Benjamin Button” disease.

The rare disorder has caused the tot to tragically age prematurely and weigh around half as much as a healthy toddler, reports the Sun.

Leicester’s Isla Kilpatrick-Screaton suffers from an aberrant strain of mandibuloacral dysplasia, a birth defect marked by an underdeveloped lower jaw and collarbone, skin deterioration, as well as selective fat loss and bones disappearing from the tips of fingers and toes, according to RareDiseases.org.

As a result, Isla ages at an accelerated pace and will likely take on the appearance of a far older person in the future, according to doctors.

Despite her elderly countenance, Isla’s development has been paradoxically delayed — she only just started to crawl and weighs a mere 15 pounds.

“Isla is the only one in the world to have this particular misspelling of the gene which causes the mutation,” said her mother Stacey, 33, who quit her teaching-assistant job to care for Isla full time.

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