Girl with rare disorder ages backwards (3 photos)

Chloe's teacher noticed the first symptoms of her disease. The girl began to walk poorly, could not open her backpack on her own and constantly complained of headaches.





Due to a rare genetic disease, 6-year-old Chloe Garcia from Nashville (UK) ages backwards, like the main character in The Amazing Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Despite her young age, the girl walks on a walker and wears thick glasses.

Little Chloe suffers from metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), a rare genetic disorder that causes a deficiency of the enzyme ARSA, which affects the brain and nervous system, resulting in poor coordination, speech, vision and severe eating problems. In simple words, doctors describe this disease as “aging in reverse.”

Unfortunately, there is currently no cure for MLD, and treatment can cost more than $4 million.



"I have to watch my daughter suffer every day. I have to find a way to stop this disease," said David Garcia, Chloe's heartbroken father.

The man says that the first symptoms of the disease in his daughter were noticed by her teacher. The child began to walk, jump and run poorly, and later could not even open his backpack on his own and constantly complained of headaches. Eventually, Chloe was taken to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a form of MLD.

“When they first told me about this, I said it couldn’t be,” David recalls in an interview with American news station WSMV.

Thomas Cassini, a geneticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who works with such patients, sympathizes with the child and his parents: "I truly feel sorry for anyone who goes through something like this."