In Hong Kong, the doctors had an unusual patient: the 66-year-old man complained of a sore stomach, but he did not even suspect that he had been a woman all his life. According to Hong Kong Medical Journal, his diagnosis was ovarian cyst.
It is reported that the patient grew up an orphan; she reached puberty at the age of 10 years. The doctors determined that she had suffered from two rare genetic diseases, one of them being Turner syndrome. According to statistics, the syndrome affects one to two baby girls in a thousand. It is a consequence of chromosomal fetal abnormalities. Malfunctioning of the gonads in case of Turner syndrome is caused by the absence or structural defects of one sex chromosome (X-chromosome). As a rule, the women, suffering from this syndrome, are not able to give birth to children, despite the intensive treatment with the doses of female hormones.
Except this syndrome, the Chinese woman of Vietnamese origin suffers from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which leads to an increase in the proportion of male hormones. This disease is observed in one baby out of 15 thousand children. The pathology manifests itself in early or improper development of physiology of the male body.
The authors of the scientific paper find it quite possible that the features of this woman’s body would have remained unexplored, but for the huge ovarian cyst. This is the sixth time in history when one person experienced both of these diseases. In the report, the doctors noted that the 66-year-old woman would continue to live the life of a man. It is also possible that in the near future the amount of testosterone in her body will be increased by the doctors.
