Israelis doctors save Gazan man with rare disease
Rare Skin Disease Ruined Gaza Man's Life — Until Israeli Doctors Stepped In
Muhammad Taluli arrived from Gaza at Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center a few months ago and unwrapped the cloth from his hands to reveal gray and white growths that looked like tree bark. The doctors had never seen anything like it.
In fact, there have been only a handful of such extreme cases of this rare condition — called epidermodysplasia verruciformis — documented in medical literature around the world, says
Dr. Michael Chernofsky, senior hand and microvascular surgeon at Hadassah, who is overseeing the man's treatment.
"I've seen some weird things, but not this," Chernofsky says.
The culprit behind epidermodysplasia verruciformis is the human papillomavirus, which comes in more than 100 different strains, combined with one of many different genetic mutations that limit the body's ability to fight off the virus. When the immune system cannot deal with HPV, the virus can take over the skin, causing the lesions, Chernofsky explains.