Madhya Pradesh: In a rare scene, a 17-year-old boy from Madhya Pradesh’s Nandleta village area has dense skin all over his body. He is said to be suffering from a disease called hypertrichosis which is also known as ‘werewolf syndrome’ in medical terms. In such a health condition, a human experiences massive hair growth in his or her body that looks almost like a wolf.
The 17-year-old boy, Lalit Patidar claims that he had this syndrome since birth but because he was a male child and having hair growth on the body was seen to be a normal phenomenon, it went unnoticed till now when the disease has proliferated majorly and his entire body is covered with fur like hair.
While giving an interview to a leading daily, Lalit said, “When I was younger, I frequently received stone-throwing. Children were afraid that I would return and bite them like an animal. My parents claim that I was shaved by the doctor at birth, but I didn’t become aware of the difference until I was approximately 6 or 7 years old. The hair started to sprout all over my body at that point, unlike anyone else I knew.”
All his other family members are normal and do not have the condition of hypertrichosis. There is no treatment for the disease as of now. But with regular cleaning, shaving, and waxing this ‘werewolf syndrome’ can be controlled, if not prevented at all. Lalit also claims to apply all these techniques alongside laser treatments and bleaching as well to keep the body hair from growing further.
The reason behind such a disease is not yet known by the medical fraternity but in some cases, it is linked to hereditary disease also. As for Lalit, he seems to be the lone person from his family to be experiencing such an outburst of hair growth in his body that has made him look all furry and wolf-like due to the ‘werewolf syndrome’.