Vietnamese doctors are doing their best to diagnose a 25-year-old woman, who for the past eleven years, has aged far beyond her years.
Nguyen Thi Nhu Y, who hails from the central province of Quang Nam, started aging at an accelerated rate when she turned 14. Prior to that, she was a normal healthy kid.
Now 25, Y weighs only 24 kilograms. She has lost 10 teeth and her hair is thinning. She very much resembles a middle aged woman.
Dr. Le Thi Tuyet Phuong of the 115 People's Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City told Thanh Nien that Y may have an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakes some part of the body as a pathogen and attacks its own cells.
She said that efforts to determine the cause of Y's ailment, as well as coming up with a proper course of treatment, has left doctors perplexed.
Dr. Do Thi Ngoc Diep, director of the HCMC Nutrition Center, said Y's condition had nothing to do with nutrition and that Y was not malnourished as people have been speculating.
According to Diep, malnourished patients do not form wrinkles on their skin, or suffer from the loss of teeth and hair as Y has.
"Y's fast aging process may have been caused by a genetic disorder," she said.