Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age | Hacker News Reader

Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age

abcnews.go.com

20 pointsjncraton16 comments

The photo is a little misleading, as it's from when she was around 3 years old. She is in fact aging physically (albeit slowly), just maintaining an infant size.

This is her at 16: http://a.abcnews.com/images/2020/ht_DSC_0098_090619_ssh.jpg

Almost completely useless. It didn't even touch the most important aspect: does she age at a cellular level?

Come to think of it, the whole thing is misrepresented. It's not that she doesn't age (they didn't say anything at all about this) only that she doesn't grow up.

There was some decent discussion over at Metafilter when this was brought up [1]. In particular, one poster dug up a journal article about Brooke [2], including this juicy tidbit in the abstract:

"Dental and bone ages are pre-teen, while telomere length and telomerase inactivity suggest a cellular age at least comparable to her chronological age."

One poster's interpretation [3] was that "The telomere length means her cells have divided "at least" as much as an average 16 year old's. The fact that she is no larger despite all this cell division means that most of the daughter cells did not survive."

[1]: http://www.metafilter.com/82714/The-girl-who-doesnt-age

[2]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

[3]: http://www.metafilter.com/82714/The-girl-who-doesnt-age#2619...

So, as far as we know, she does age, and just doesn't develop normally? That's a disappointment, and it utterly ruins the newsworthiness of the case. Everybody would love to slow down aging, but I don't think anybody is keen to speed up or slow down human development.

That sucks but it's interesting to note that physical depiction is in this case related to nothing other than the developmental.

The actual paper states:

"Analyses of her chromosomes and DNA have thus far yielded normal findings. Nonetheless, the data suggest that spontaneous mutation of the gene(s) directing normal development occurred and that the difficulty in identifying it (them) may be due to assay limitations and/or the extent to which analyses have been employed."

Richard F Walker, Lawrence C Pakula, Maxine J Sutcliffe, Patricia A Kruk, Jesper Graakjaer, Jerry W Shay. A case study of “disorganized development” and its possible relevance to genetic determinants of aging. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development, Vol. 130, No. 5. (May 2009), pp. 350-356.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

here is the difference between HN and reddit, on reddit the top comment for this story with 1071 points is:

    i'm so going to hit that when she turns 18

at least here there is good discussion

I remember when people would comment on various Ron Paul stories on Reddit with a similar sneer toward Digg. HN is not a unique community except for the fact that it's thus far remained away from the public eye. The more people join HN, the more frequent the "newb waves" of unrelated stories will come, and the fewer calm periods like this one we'll have.

I'm hoping that HN grows slowly, because it isn't trying for fame unlike Reddit, but I've got no doubts that in time it'll go the way of every other community that relied on an upvote-downvote system to keep users in line.

Oh, it _is_ growing slowly. A friend of mine who shares my interests, follows Y Combinator and is a fan of PG for a couple of years still had no idea that HN exists. I was pretty shocked when I found out. I guess Erlang week works...

Hmmm. So are we saying that reddit is kind of halted at a certain stage of development, while HN is showing maturity?

I'm impressed by the family, how well they've adapted to it. It was heartbreaking for me to look at the pictures, so I'm glad she's in a great family.

If you are curious about the enzymes/genes that are involved in the aging process here is an interesting link: http://crea.berkeley.edu/wong-interview.shtml

If there are biologists/geneticist who can explain some of the stuff discussed in the above link - that would be great also.

I studied genetics as my major, but that was a while ago (7 years ago now?). Here is the short version of what I remember.

Telomeres are areas of non-expressed DNA at the end of your chromosomes. If the telomeres are too short in a strand of DNA, they are eliminated. (This could happen for a variety of reasons, ranging from replication errors to direct damage to the strand that was being replicated due to exposure to radiation or other mutagens).

When you get older, long-term damage to your DNA means that your telomeres have been slowly getting shorter. When I was a student, the theory was that this was one of the causes of ageing (less and less replications can be done from a strand, etc..)

The research Dr. Wong is doing appears to be about the role of telomeres in patients suffering from a disease where white blood cells have no telomeres attached. One of the therapeutic ideas she is investigating is artificially adding telomeres to see if it has any benefit. Another question raised is whether or not this sort of therapy could apply to retard ageing.

Fascinating stuff, all around.

Are internal organs aging very slowly too? If so does that mean they get to live super long?

It's funny that this girl is being hailed as totally unique, but just a month or two I heard about this man (boy?) who is 26 and still presents just like a toddler:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Jerly%20Lyngdoh

You'd think these docs would better connected, or at least read the news. Or, you know, Google.

Poor girl/guy. They clearly have family who love them very much, to put up with eternal babyhood. (Which probably means there are more, who weren't so lucky.)

I'm curious if her cellular systems rejuvenate or mend themselves... if she is forever in 'repair mode' maybe she IS the fountain of youth... or maybe we're all wrong and shes vampire?

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