Adult Trapped In The Body Of A Toddler: 19-year-old Who Stopped Growing Before She Turned 2 | PHOTOS

19-year-old Ajifa being carried by her mum

 

 

 

Ajifa Khatun who looks like a toddler is 19, having stopped growing just before her second birthday she weighs just 1st 3lbs, and still needs to be spoon-fed and carried everywhere by her mother Apila, 42.

The teenager was a healthy baby when she was born in 1994 and it wasn't long before she started to walk and talk. However, her development then stalled. See more photos after the cut...

Doctors initially told her mother and father, Sekh, 52, that Ajifa would start growing again. They then blamed cancer for her condition, before suggesting that it could be a hormone disorder and the family are still at a loss as to why Ajifa is how she is.

Scientists believe that Ajifa could have Laron Syndrome, a rare genetic condition, which is believed to have affected just 300 people across the globe - with a third of them living in in remote villages in Ecuador’s southern Loja province. People living with Laron lack a hormone called Insulin-like Growth Factor 1, or IGF-1, which stimulates the cell to grow and divide to form new cells.

'Ajifa is likely to maintain her childlike features for the majority of her life,' Tam Fry from the Child Growth Foundation told The Sun. Mr Fry believes Ajifa 'probably' has Laron Syndrome.

Ajifa's younger sisters Rini, 17, Rabiya, 14, and brother Danish, eight, now tower over her, while her vocabulary extends only to 'maa', for mother, 'baba' for father, and 'didi' for sister. She is physically and cognitively similar to a two-year-old, and has an IQ of less than 20.

Ajifa with her siblings