“不老女婴”离世 20年容貌如婴儿

Brooke Greenberg, who baffled scientists because she never aged, has died at the age of 20, never having developed beyond the physical size of an infant or the mental capacity of a 2-year-old.

永远不会长大的布鲁克·格林伯格让科学家们迷惑不已，她在上周离世，现年20岁的她一直保持着婴儿的身形，智力发育一直保持在2岁儿童的水平。

The daughter of Howard and Melanie Greenberg from Reisterstown, Brooke is one of about a dozen children in the world who have what some call syndrome X -- a kind of Benjamin Button disorder that prevents them from aging.

布鲁克·格林伯格来自雷斯特斯敦的霍华德·格林伯格和梅勒尼·格林伯格的女儿。她是世界上十来个患有所谓“X综合征”的儿童之一，这是一种与本杰明·巴顿类似的病症，会让儿童无法长大。

小编注：本杰明·巴顿是斯科特·菲茨杰拉德写于1922年的短篇小说《返老还童》中的人物形象。本杰明以老人形象降生人世，之后越活越年轻。2008年同名电影由布拉德·皮特和凯特·布兰切特主演，获第81届奥斯卡金像奖提名。

Her funeral was Sunday at a synagogue outside Baltimore, family friends confirmed.

据这家人的亲友称，她的家人已经在周日于巴尔的摩的犹太会堂为她举行葬礼。

Brooke has been pushed around in a stroller all her life. In 2009, when her family was interviewed on ABC， Brook weighed 16 pounds and was 30 inches tall. She didn't speak, but she laughed when she was happy, and clearly recognized her three sisters: Emily, now 26; Caitlin, now 23; and Carly, now 17.

布鲁克生前一直都是躺在婴儿车里，被大人们推来推去。在2009年接受ABC之声采访的时候，布鲁克的体重为16磅（约7.26公斤），身高30英寸（76.2 厘米）。她不会说话，但是开心的时候会笑，而且显然认识她的三个姐妹：现年26岁的艾米丽、现年23岁的凯特琳和现年17岁的卡莉。

But only her hair and fingernails grew.

但是只有她的头发和指甲壳会长长。

In her first six years, Brooke went through a series of medical emergencies from which she recovered, often without explanation. She survived surgery for seven perforated stomach ulcers. She had a brain seizure followed by what was diagnosed as a stroke that, weeks later, had left no apparent damage.

在出生后的最初6年里，布鲁克经历了一系列的紧急医疗事故，每次都会奇迹般的康复，无法解释原因。她接收了7次胃溃疡穿孔手术，她曾被诊断为突发中风，接着又突发大脑癫痫，数周后奇迹般康复，未留下明显的脑损伤。

Richard F. Walker, a retired medical researcher from the University of Florida Medical School who now does his research at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, has followed Brooke's case since she was about 2 years old, comparing her genetic code with that of other children with the same condition. Their bodies do not develop as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync, according to Walker. No known genetic syndromes or chromosomal abnormalities can explain why.

已从佛罗里达大学医学院退休，现于圣彼得堡全科儿童医院从事研究的理查德·沃克从布鲁克2岁左右就开始追踪她的案例。他将布鲁克的基因序列与其他相同病例的儿童相互比对。沃克说，这些儿童的身体无法作为一个统一整体发展，而是作为各个独立的部分发展自身，相互并不协调。没有任何遗传综合症或染色体异常可以解释这种情况。

Brooke still had baby teeth at age 16, and her bone age was estimated to be more like 10.

布鲁克在16岁的时候还没脱掉乳牙。她的骨龄约莫仅有10岁左右。

Walker also studies Gabby Williams, an 8-year-old from Billings, who weighs only 11 pounds and a 29-year-old Florida man who has the body of a 10-year-old. Like Brooke, they never seem to age.

沃克同时正在研究的病例还有来自比林斯的8岁男孩,盖比·威廉——他的体重仅有11磅重（约5公斤），以及来自佛罗里达的一个29岁的男子，他们都和布鲁克一样，从未长大。

Not only do the people he's studying have a growth rate of one-fifth the speed of others, but they live with a variety of other medical problems, including deafness, the inability to walk, eat or even speak.

沃克研究的这些病例的生长率只有常人的1/5, 而且他们还有许多其他的医疗问题，例如失聪、无法行走、无法进食或无法说话等等。