Progeria, also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome (HGPS), is a rare disease that causes children to age eight times faster than they are supposed to. It was discovered in England in 1886 and was named after Jonathan Hutchinson, who first discovered it and Hastings Gilford, who was the first to refer to the disease as Progeria. The name Progeria is derived from Greek and means "prematurely old". Progeria is commonly referred to as an "early aging …showed first 75 words of 568 total…

…showed last 75 words of 568 total…affected. It is an autosomal recessive disease, meaning that an individual carrying a mutation in a single gene does not show any symptoms. When two individuals with the gene for Progeria have a child, that child has a 1 in 4 chance of inheriting two recessive alleles and therefore having the disease. (See back (pg.4) for further understanding of inheritance pattern of this disease). Progeria is a very tragic disease that hopefully someday will have a cure.