Luis Manuel Gonzales is ten months old but weighs as heavy as a nine-year-old, puzzling his parents and doctors alike, who have yet to come up with an explanation for his condition.
Gonzales’ mother, Isabel Pantoja, 24, is from Colima, Mexico. She wasn’t worried about her son’s sudden weight gain at first, but he is now bigger and heavier than his brother Mario, who is three years old, The New York Post reports.
The situation was reported by the Daily Mail, with the family speaking about their concerns and the stress of not knowing what is happening to Gonzales. When the child was born, he was a normal eight pounds heavy, similar to his older brother. However, it became apparent that the two were very different.
At two months, Gonzales weighed 22 pounds and had to wear clothes for toddlers ages two to three years. By ten months, he had reached 62 pounds, baffling doctors. Even his father, Mario, who works at a juice factory and is physically fit, gets exhausted from carrying his son around.
Family members take turns pushing the boy to his hospital appointments four times a week in a battered push-chair.
One theory is that Gonzales could be suffering from Prader-Willi Syndrome, a genetic condition which results in a child getting hungry all the time, prone to continuous overeating. But the child does not beg for food and appears to eat a normal amount for someone his age.
Silvia Orozco, a doctor specializing in nutrition, took notice of the case and decided to help out. She is waiting for results, but is hopeful that hormone injections might help the child’s condition. His weight gain may have been caused by a lack of nutrients in his mother’s diet while she was carrying him, Orozco suggests.
The family has set up a Facebook page and bank account to try and raise funds needed for Gonzales’ medical care.
