Six year old girl with Body of an Old Woman: Adalia Rose Suffers rare Premature Aging Condition

AFRIK UPDATE

She currently has nearly 6million Facebook fans, an inbox packed full of thousands of e-mails and is inundated with hundreds of letters. Adalia Rose Williams enjoys singing, dancing and dressing up.

Her emergence into the public eye has also brought its fair share of unwanted attention. She has been subjected to vile abuse and has even been the victim of a death hoax.

She suffers from a rare condition called progeria that is making her tiny body age several times faster than normal. The average lifespan for a sufferer is just 13 years.

The illness means she weighs just 14lbs - about the same as her baby brother Marcelo. She is bald and other children sometimes mistake her for a boy.

The youngster, from Round Rock, a city 20 miles north of Austin, Texas, needs help walking up a staircase and doesn't go to school because she needs constant care.

As a result, some people give her strange looks but her parents - 24-year-old mother Natalia Amozurrutia and her 26-year-old stepfather Ryan Pallante - tell her it's because 'they've never seen an angel,' they told Gawker.com.

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome is an unusual genetic condition that occurs in an estimated one in eight million live births.

The symptoms are similar to normal ageing but appear in childhood and advance rapidly, with the first signs showing in infancy.

Sufferers experience limited growth and alopecia across the whole body.

They often share distinctive features including a narrow nose, a small jaw and a large head in relation to their body.

Health issues associated with progeria have much in common with illnesses often suffered by the elderly, including loss of eyesight, kidney failure and heart problems.

But patients don't suffer the mental or motor deterioration associated with normal ageing.

There is no known cure or effective treatment for the condition, and those diagnosed with it rarely live past 13.