Woman afflicted by mannequin disease' grows second skeleton

A 23-year-old woman in Connecticut, in United States, is slowly getting immobilised because she is growing a second skeleton inside her body. At the age of just five and a half months, Jasmin Floyd was diagnosed with Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) also known as ‘mannequin disease’.

 

 

Floyd’s condition is causing her ligaments and muscles to turn into bone with the passage of time. Its occurrence is so rare that it affects just 1 in two million people. There have been so far only 700 confirmed cases in the world of this disease. Moreover, surgery to remove the bone only worsens the condition as that will lead more bone to grow around the healing wound.

 

 

Floyd revealed that she had been told that she would live just up to 45 years of age as bone was now growing around her rib cage as well. “Even though my lungs are healthy, the area around them is not,” she told CNN. “This progression affected many aspects of my life — primarily my diet, but also talking at length and being able to brush my teeth. I’m still working on adapting to the changes and figuring things out.”

Know more about her story by clicking on the link below: