Boy, 2, suffers from Children’s Alzheimer’s
A rare genetic disorder has left a two-year-old with a form of dementia, a disease more normally associated with the elderly.
Taylor Smith, from Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, has been diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, also known as Children’s Alzheimer’s.
The disease means that the toddler is likely to develop signs of dementia before he becomes a teenager, although the symptoms can appear at any time.
Around 600,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed with dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is the most common form of the disease.
A spokesman for the Neimann Pick Disease Group said that the disease was progressive and often meant an extremely limited lifespan for the sufferer.
