Progeria

The term progeria, meaning prematurely old, was first given to a rare disease of childhood by Hastings Gilford.1The original case was described by Hutchinson,2but Gilford classified the disease as a distinct clinical entity and presented 2 cases of his own, in one of which the patient eventually came to autopsy The children all had many similar characteristics, notably, dwarfism, almost complete baldness, a beaked nose, a retracted chin, a narrow chest, prominent veins, arthritic changes, atrophy of the skin and subcutaneous tissues, obliteration of the normal depression of the umbilicus and peculiar brownish pigmented spots on the skin. In general the three patients presented some of the features of a young person, but these were combined with many of the stigmas of old age. Reports in the American literature are few, and the first one, by Rand.3did not describe a typical picture of the