Imagine having a disfiguring disease brought on by a suppressed immune system. Perhaps you had an organ transplantation or an injury from which you just didn’t heal quickly and effectively. Warts began to multiply all over your body. You are told the only way you can live a normal life is to have two major surgeries a year for the rest of your life to remove the warts covering your body.
Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia is a rare hereditary autosomal recessive disease. The flat, wart-like lesions are caused by a deficiency relating to the control of zinc in the cells. This deficiency is tied to the genes EVER1 and EVER2, which are adjacent to chromosome # 17. The disorder is disfiguring and prevents the sufferer from leading a normal life.
The wart-like lesions just mentioned typically appear within the first 20 years of the person’s life, often being misdiagnosed as medical professionals usually lack knowledge about this skin disease. Of the sufferers of the disease, approximately 61.5% develop symptoms between the ages of 5 and 11 years of age. No race or gender is particularly susceptible, so people people pretty much have an equal chance of getting this disorder.
Approximately 80% of the world population have HPV (types 5 and 8) in their system, but the infectious strain does not become active most of the time. For those whose immune system is impaired in response to such viruses, these strains of HPV can get out of control, causing the warts to proliferate.
This warts of this condition and have been likened to tree roots because of their appearance. Even if the warts are cut off, as was the case with one man, Dede Koswara, who had 13 pounds of warts sliced away during surgery, the warts can grow back – within months in Koswara’s case. These surgical procedures are risky, time-consuming, and take weeks to recover from. However, surgery is the only remedy as there is no cure or prevention known at this time.
Of those that had this skin disorder, some were renal transplant patients, some were dialysis patients, and others just inherited the disorder without any evasive or traumatic medical problems occurring in their lives.
The Sun expodure aggravates this skin disorder. These warts, which have white spots and are pityriasis versicolor-like, have 15 different types of HPV strains, typically. Incredibly, there are over 70 different types of HPV strains documented thus far. The disorder has also been positively linked to Bowen’s Disorder as well. People with this skin disorder complain of burning in their skin regularly. The likelihood of someone with this disorder developing cancer is 50% and the cancer is most likely to develop in their 40s or 50s.
In 2008, a 35-year-old man named Dede Koswara was featured in a Discovery Channel special that highlighted facts on this bizarre skin disorder. Though he was successful in having five pounds of warts removed from his body, the warts aggressively returned within a few months. People with this condition typically have to have surgical removal of warts every six months for the rest of their lives in order to lead a full and productive life. To learn more about Dede Koswara, click here.
Those suffering from this disorder no doubt have even worse psychological effects from it. Divorce and loss of viable income is typical.