40 Year Old Child: A New Case (DOCUMENTARY) – the little girl who doesn’t grow

“TLC shared Gabby’s story in a special called “My 40-Year-Old Child.” The hour-long documentary also profiled 40-year-old Nicky Freeman, an Australian man with the appearance of a 10-year-old.”

“40 Year Old Child: A New Case – TLC revisits the Williams family in Billings, Montana, whose 8-year-old daughter Gabby suffers a mystery medical condition that slows her rate of aging.

The Williams along with a handful of other families are facing the unknown when battling against this bizarre and inexplicable syndrome that affects the growth and overall development of their children, from blindness and deafness to the inability to walk, eat or even speak on their own.

Following the everyday lives of these families and the doctors who have dedicated their careers to studying the signs of aging.”

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TLC & NY Daily News: “Eight-year-old Gabby Williams weighs only 11 pounds. The tiny girl from Billings, Mont., still looks like an infant and needs to be cared for as if she is a newborn, with her mother and father changing her diapers and feeding her multiple times a day.

Her mother, Mary Margret Williams, told ABC News that Gabby hasn’t changed much over the years. In fact, her skin still feels like a baby’s and her hair is still fine-textured.

“She has gotten a little longer and we have jumped into putting her in size 3-6 month clothes instead of 0-3 months for the footies,” she said.

Gabby is one of only a few people with a baffling condition that seems to prevent them from aging. It’s so rare that scientists have yet to coin an official name for it.

TLC shared Gabby’s story back in 2011 in a special called “My 40-Year-Old Child.” The hour-long documentary also profiled 40-year-old Nicky Freeman, an Australian man with the appearance of a 10-year-old.

Scientists have since discovered two more people with similar cases of the mysterious syndrome: a 29-year-old Florida man with the appearance of a 10-year-old, and a 31-year-old Brazilian woman who still looks like a toddler.

The show chronicles medical researcher Richard Walker’s search for clues as to why these individuals don’t age and what they have in common.

Perhaps these amazing people even hold the secret to eternal youth.

Walker explained that “developmental inertia,” or physiological change, is vital for human growth.

“Without that process we never develop,” he told ABC News. “When we develop, all the pieces of our body come together and change and are coordinated. Otherwise, there would be chaos.”

However, the body continues to change once it reaches maturity, and there is no way to stop the process.

Walker said he believes he found one of the genes responsible for developmental inertia. He also said the mutations are on the regulatory genes on the second female X chromosome.”