A VIETNAMESE woman who gone from being a pretty young mother to looking like a grandmother in just a few weeks has blamed seafood for her bizarre condition.
Not so long ago Mrs Nguyen Thi Phuong was an attractive 26 year old housewife. Today she looks like a woman of 75, her face wrinkled and her skin sagging.
Mrs Thi Phuong has told her family and baffled medical staff that she believes her extreme condition may have been caused by an allergy to seafood, which is very popular in Vietnam. The couple live in the Mekong Delta where there is a lot of fishing activity.
She says she has been forced to wear a mask in public to hide her appearance but now doctors, who are quite sceptical about seafood being responsible, are attempting to establish exactly what caused her rapid and sudden ageing.
Her husband, Than Thuyen, a joiner, has said his love has not faded for his wife despite her ageing and has pledged to stand by her while a remedy is found.. Doctors from a university hospital in the Ben Tre province are examining Mrs Thi Phuong and agree that her condition is indeed very rare. They think that she might have taken corticoid over a long period. Corticoid, a form of steroid, is sometimes used in Vietnamese medicine to accelerate its effects and can cause severe abnormalities to the skin. Doctors are confident that they can restore some of her skin back to normality and make her look younger, possible by as much as 60 per cent. But it is unlikely that she will ever regain all of her former beauty.
Should people be 'stimulated' to eat white fish alternatives to cod?
