Brooke Greenberg, A Girl Who Does Not Grow

By Suparna Chakaraborthy

Monday, May 10, 2010, 17:24

Brooke Greenberg, a 16 year old girl weighs 16lb and is just 30 inch tall. Similar to that of a one year old baby. Though she is 16, her body and brain has shown no sign of growth. American scientists are studying her DNA, to get an insight into mysteries of aging.

Brooke has gone through a series of stomach ulcer surgeries and brain sezure. When she was four years old she had gone into a deep sleep for 14 days. The family were almost sure of her demise and the doctors were desperately looking for a cure. But on the 15th day Brooke open her eyes and smiled at her mother.

Brooke Greenberg, fights all the odds with ease and passes by every storm which comes her way. She loves shopping like any other girl and accompanies her mother in shopping malls and other places. Brooke is fed through a tube because her esophagus is so small that food can back up into her lungs and cause pneumonia.

In all these years of treatment, Brooke has shone no sign of growth. Only her hair an nails grow. Doctors say, “We think that Brooke"s condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of aging. We think that she has a mutation in the genes that control her aging and development so that she appears to have been frozen in time. If we can compare her genome to the normal version then we might be able to find those genes and see exactly what they do and how to control them."

Doctors and her parents only hope that with all the study and experiments, Brooker gets her size and shape. The world awaits for doctors to come up with some cure.