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Tree Man Syndrome is a rare genetic disease that causes the hands and feet to grow scaly macules and papules resembling a tree barks. In a Bangladesh, doctors fear that the first female victim may be a 10-year old girl.

Tree man syndrome is medically known as epidermodysplasia verruciformis (EV) or Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, named after the physicians who first documented the disease. The heridetary skin disorder is highly associated with carcinoma of the skin that occurs between the ages of one and 20 years old.

People affected with tree man syndrome have lifelong eruptions of warts and lesions that could also develop into cutaneous carcinomas. No curative treatment has been discovered yet but acitretin, interferons with retinoids and cimetidine have been suggested.

Sahana Khatun started to grow a bark-like wart four months ago according to a report by BBC News. His father was unalarmed then, but when the warts started to spread on her face, he went to Bangladesh capital Dhaka to sought medical help.

The first Bangladeshi diagnosed to have a Tree Man Syndrome is Abul Bajandar who is 27 years old. On his hands grew warts weighing up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds). He has already undergone 16 separate surgeries at Dhaka's Medical College Hospital. Doctors were reported to have announced that Bajandar could soon leave the hospital.

Doctors are now conducting tests to see whether Khatun will be the first female to be afflicted with Tree Man Syndrome. However, Samanta Lal Sen, head of Dhaka's Medical College Hospital burn and plastic surgery unit, believes that is the first woman to have the disease.

According to The Telegraph, there are only four people in the world who have the rare condition. All of them are men. Last year, an Indonesian man died due to complications of the Tree Man Syndrome.