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Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome Essay

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Introduction to Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome was first reported by a man named Dr. Jonathan Hutchinson in 1886 (Gordon, Rothman, Lόpez-Otin, & Misteli, 2014). In 1904, Hastings Gilford further expanded on Hutchinson’s work. Both men contributed greatly to reporting, researching, and contributing to the knowledge of this disease and it was thus named Hutchinson Gilford progeria syndrome, or HGPS for short (Gordon, et al., 2014; Gordon, Brown, & Collins, 2015). The syndrome’s name – progeria – derives from the Greek language: pro meaning “before” and geron commonly meaning “old person” or “old age” and together meaning “prematurely old” (Coutinho, Falcᾶo-Silva, Goncalves, & da Nόbrega, 2009; Pollex & Hegele, 2004; Gordon et al, 2014; Tsiligirl, Fekos, Theodoridou, & Lavdaniti, 2015) HGPS is considered to be a part of a group of diseases called laminopathies (Gordon et al., 2014: Coutinho et al, 2009) Laminopathies are characterized by mutations along the LMNA …show more content…

Clinical characteristics fall under three categories: Dermatological characteristics, facial characteristics, and musculoskeletal disorder. Individuals who have classic HGPS have most, if not all, of the following characteristics. While individuals who have the even rarer atypical case of HGPS, have characteristics that can be more or less intense than the classical case (Coutinho et al., 2009). The most common dermatological characteristics include: loss of eyebrows, sclerodermatous plaques, loss of eyelashes, alopecia, wrinkling of the skin and nail dystrophy (Tsiligiri et al., 2015; Coutinho et al., 2009; Pollex & Heagele, 2004). The most notable dermatological manifestation for those that have HGPS, are loss of subcutaneous fat and prominent scalp veins (Tsiligiri et al., 2015; Pollex & Heagele, 2004; Gordon et al.,

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