Brooke Greenberg was born on January 8, 1993 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, one month prior to her due date, American from Reisterstown, Maryland, who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age Brooke is 20 years old but you won't guess from her appearance.
For 20 years, she has remained in the physical and mental developmental stage of a toddler with an estimated mental age of about nine months to one year. Doctors are baffled and struggling to explain what happened to her and caused the permanent suspension of her development. Apparently, the doctors investigating this medical mystery agreed that it would be best to look at this girl’s DNA as a result of their finding “no apparent abnormalities in her endocrine system, no gross chromosomal abnormalities, or any of the other disruptions known to occur in humans that can cause developmental issues.” Interestingly enough, scientists hope that, by analyzing this 20-year-old’s genetic makeup, they might be able to gain a better understanding of how to treat several medical conditions which are in one way or another related to old age. Thus, Dr Eric Schadt argued that, were it to be proven that the abnormal genes which are keeping Brooke from growing up are also involved in aging related processes, it might be possible to manipulate these genes in order to tackle disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and several types of cancer.
Medical mystery aside, Brooke’s family admit that, despite their loving the girl, they sometimes lie about her age when random strangers ask them about how old she is.
“’My system always has been to turn years into months. So, if someone asked today, I might say, she’s [20] months old,” Mrs. Greenberg confessed.
Over the past several years, the Greenbergs visited many specialists, looking for an explanation for their daughter's strange condition, yet there has been no diagnosis of any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality Brooke Greenberg's mother Melanie said, "They [the specialists] just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinologist. We tried the growth hormone…". The growth hormone treatment had no effect. Howard, Brooke's father, said: "I mean she did not put on an ounce or she did not grow an inch … That’s when I knew there was a problem." After the growth hormone administration failed, the doctors, unable to diagnose a known condition, named her condition Syndrome X
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