38-year-old Mandy Sellars suffers from an extremely rare condition, which made her legs and feet three times their normal size. She even had her massive left leg amputated after it became infected with septicaemia. But the stump soon started growing again and within three years measured a meter in circumference and weighed 3stone.
Mandy has now been told it has no name after genetic testing revealed it was the first case of its kind in the world.
Over the past year, Dr Robert Semple has mapped her DNA from blood and tissue samples. Mandys’ presumed she had a rare form of Proteus Syndrome – the condition that affected the Elephant Man.
Dr Semple’s team have come up with a medication aimed at replacing her unique mutated gene with a therapeutic gene. Mandy has been taking the medication since last septemper. Since then, she noticed that the limbs have started to shrink a little, she said “I just kind of accepted my condition would get worse and keep growing but I am more optimistic following the discovery.” Watch the video below.