Landon Jones stopped eating a year ago. The appetite of a 12-year-old American teenager disappeared after he ate a slice of pizza and a glass of ice cream in the evening.
Waking up on the morning of October 14, 2013, Landon lost all sense of hunger and thirst. The once energetic young man who most of all loved cycling and playing in the park with his friends and brother, became sedentary. He was constantly unwell and suffered from dizziness almost 24 hours a day.
Today, Landon's parents, Michael and Debbie, are desperate for help to figure out what happened to their child, while trying to find a clue to their son's strange behavior. In an attempt to diagnose the mysterious disease that afflicted their son, the family traveled to five different US cities.
A local pediatrician in Waterloo, Iowa, prescribed antibiotics as treatment, but Landon still does not eat or drink after treatment. After that, the parents took their son to Rochester, Minnesota, where experts from the world-famous Mayo Clinic studied Landon's case. However, their attempts to cure the boy have not yet borne any fruit. The examination of the child gave no answers.
The National Institutes of Health in the United States, which studies rare cases of disease every year, is currently considering meeting with Landon. Over the past year, the teen has lost almost 17 kilograms, losing weight from 47 to 30 kilograms after he began to lose almost a kilogram a week in the fall of last year.
The boy's parents say they have tried every possible method to whet their son's appetite, but he rarely eats more than a slice of a sandwich and a few chips.
While his younger brother Bruce plays with his dog every day after returning from school, Landon's languid prefers to lie on the couch. Last year, the teenager was absent from school for 65 days. According to his parents, he did not study for a month, being forced to watch his classmates from the side.
Repeatedly, Landon's parents tried to persuade their son to eat and drink, according to Mail Online. The next step, they say, is to install a feeding tube through which food will flow directly into Landon's stomach.
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According to the father, the son's illness is associated with a malfunction in the hypothalamus. A pea-sized region of the brain regulates hunger and thirst, body temperature and blood pressure.
Dr. Mark Patterson of the Mayo Clinic said Landon may be the only person in the world to suffer from this kind of disease.