Rare condition sees girl age at eight times normal pace

SHE is still at primary school and loves to play with her friends, but seven-year-old Ashanti Elliott-Smith is already turning into an old woman.

She suffers from an incredibly rare premature ageing condition — which means she is ageing at EIGHT times the normal speed.

Her body is already too fragile to cope with childhood diseases such as chicken pox and her heart is weakening.

And her mum Phoebe Smith keeps a memory box and puts in all her clothes and every painting and drawing she does at school.

Phoebe, 24, who lives near Brighton, said: “I keep everything that Ashanti does because she is so precious. I’ve not even thrown a single sock away.

“We make the most of each day — she’s such an easygoing lively little girl and I’m so proud of her.

“She doesn’t let her condition bother her at all — and she’s such a big character. Everyone knows when Ashanti is in the room.”

Brave Ashanti is one of only two children in Britain with Hutchinson Gilford Progeria syndrome.

It occurs in just one in eight million newborns. There are 53 cases of Progeria around the world, and the other sufferer in Britain is Hayley Okines, 12, from Bexhill on Sea.

Progeria accelerates the process of ageing to about eight times the normal rate, and because of this a child with the condition at ten years old will have similar respiratory, heart and arthritic conditions of an 80-year old.

Children at 10 years old usually are the height of an average three-year-old. The average life expectancy is 13, but there have been cases where children have lived longer.

“She understands most of her condition but we don’t talk to her about the prognosis as we don’t want to scare her.

“But we just make the most of every day we have with her.”