Laurence-Moon-Biedl Syndrome in an Arab Boy: Familial Incidence

During the past eighty-nine years, following the report of 4 cases by Laurence and Moon (1) from the Royal Eye Hospital in London, some 300 cases of the Laurence-Moon-Biedl syndrome have been described in the medical literature (2). Of these, however, only 20 to 30 per cent have exhibited the complete picture of the syndrome comprising the six cardinal features of obesity, retinitis pigmentosa, polydactylism, mental retardation, hypogonadism and familial incidence (3). The reported patients have been of many different races—Negroes, Indians, Greeks, Jews, Bantus, Caucasians and Anglo-Saxons. The present case seems worth recording, not only because it has all the major features of the syndrome but also because, to the author’s knowledge, it is the first report of this condition in an Arab.