A 26-year-old Korean man suffers from “Highlander Syndrome”, a rare disease that makes him look like a child in his early years.
Dressed in his pajamas and sitting on his bed, it is true that Hyomyung Shin looks like any ten-year-old. And that’s the problem: in fact, the young Korean man is 26 years old! He suffers from “Highlander Syndrome”, a disease without an official medical name that has caused his physical development to stop. According to the site Koreaboo, this pathology prevents him for the moment from reaching puberty.
In a report on a local television station, Hyomyung is seen attempting to live a normal life. He goes out to nightclubs, he drinks glasses with his friends and even claims to meet girls. According to several doctors, apart from his poor development (he currently measures 1m63), this disease has no other harmful effects on his health.
Only very few cases exist
Very rare are the listed situations similar to this one. Only four other similar cases have been identified in the world: a man living in Florida aged 29 but who looks 10, a 31-year-old Brazilian woman who appears to be only two years old, Gabrielle Williams, an eight-year-old girl who looks like a six month old baby and Brooke Greenberg. This American now deceased kept physically and mentally the features of a baby despite her 20 years. In 2009 for example, she measured 76 cm for 7.3 kg and had an estimated mental age between 9 and 12 months.
The unknown disease is also fueling the curiosity of many researchers, even suggesting exceptional scientific advances. Professor Walker of All Children’s Hospital (Florida), who has decided to devote the end of his career to this pathology, concludes that “if we identify the gene responsible for this phenomenon and that in adulthood we could find a stop button for the aging of the body, we would be biologically immortal ”!
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