Ive heard it called the premature ageing disease. Do progeroid syndromes actually cause patients to get older more quickly than normal people?
The short answer is no, but theres a lot more to it than that. Progeroid syndromes mimic some of the effects of natural ageing, but none of these diseases precisely duplicates the natural ageing process. Symptoms of these syndromes may look the same as natural ageing, for example, many progeroid syndromes lead to hair graying and loss. However, all progeroid syndromes also lack symptoms of the natural ageing process, such as increased incidence of Alzheimers, or senility. These diseases also have features not associated with ageing, like skin ulcers in several syndromes. So while children with progeria may look as though they are simply getting very old very quickly, in reality the cell processes that cause these syndromes are very complex and do not, so far as we can tell, accurately model the process by which normal people age.
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