An unnamed 37-year-old resident of Italy came to the hospital due to the fact that his head looked like a patchwork quilt due to excessive skin folds.
In addition, the patient suffered from a rare disorder called acromegaly, which means he had enlarged arms, legs, and a strongly protruding lower jaw. Acromegaly is often called gigantism, as such people are often tall due to the increase in bones.
This unusual case was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
According to doctors, the thickening on the head is called "cutis verticis gyrata" and this anomaly may be associated with acromegaly, but it can also develop in completely ordinary people.
If in any news you read that a person's “head took the form of brains,” then this article will 100% focus on this anomaly. And of course, the skin folds are not connected in any way with the convolutions of the brain.
Unfortunately, Italian doctors were only able to establish the correct diagnosis, but there is often no way to help with such a deviation. Sometimes people with "cutis verticis gyrata" undergo a very unpleasant-looking operation, during which the skin from the skull is completely removed, leveled and "pulled" back. But this cannot be done in all cases.
The skin folds on the head are soft, but cannot be manually straightened. The anomaly is not congenital, but manifests itself already in adulthood for unknown reasons.
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In the case of the Italian, the reason was seen in the increased release of growth hormones, which are also the cause of acromegaly. The doctors tried to suppress the secretion of hormones, but to no avail. They later scanned the man's brain for MRI and the scanner showed a tumor on the pituitary gland.
After surgical removal of the tumor and special injections under the scalp, the appearance of the patient's head improved slightly.
Below are photographs of other patients with a rare abnormality of "cutis verticis gyrata".