Nguyen Thi Phuong, the 26-year-old woman whose face aged nearly five decades in a four-year span, is looking a bit younger after a month and a half of treatment at the HCM City University Medical Centre.
Professor Dang Van Phuoc, vice director of the centre, who chaired a press meeting yesterday about the patient, said that Phuong's illness was the second case in the world. Twenty-five per cent of her wrinkles had disappeared.
The native of Mekong delta Ben Tre Province underwent many tests to exclude other causes for the disease and to find a proper treatment method.
Dr Hoang Van Minh, head of the centre's dermatology and venerology department, said test results examined by US-based Baylor University indicated a diagnosis of lipodystrophy with Cushing Syndrome.
Minh said that some of the wrinkles on her face had disappeared.
Phuoc said the cure rate was high because she had received an early diagnosis.
Foreign experts have offered to participate in helping with her case.
Phuong will undergo treatment for an additional three months, and will then receive cosmetic surgery. She is in good health.
She told Tuoi Tre newspaper that her face had become less itchy and heavy after more than one month of taking medicine.
Phuong developed a wrinkled face and sagging skin in 2008 but was too poor to seek treatment.
Believing that her condition was caused by a life-long allergy to seafood, she bought medicine at a local pharmacy instead of going to the hospital. She and her husband Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, now 33, were too poor to afford it.
She had always worn a mask in public to hide her appearance from prying eyes.
Before being hospitalised, Phuong and her husband had to move from her hometown in Ben Tre to southern Binh Phuoc Province to avoid curious eyes from relatives and neighbours. — VNS