In the town of Piñas, nestled in southern Ecuador's Andes mountains, an unusually high number of people live with Laron syndrome, a rare genetic condition that prevents growth beyond 1.2m (3.9ft). This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
María Luísa Romero and her twin sister, María del Cisne, both have the condition. They say being there for each other has helped them. "We're always strong, we pool our strength and one defends the other," María Luísa explains.
Living with Laron syndrome can be challenging, but researchers believe it may provide an unexpected advantage: the incidence of diseases such as cancer and diabetes among Laron patients is lower than in the general population. They hope studying this could lead to treatments to prevent cancer.
"The idea is to be able to replicate, through a drug or a diet, what happens in people with Laron syndrome, in other people without the syndrome," says endocrinologist Dr Jaime Guevara, who has been studying it for 40 years. "It would be a great contribution from this wonderful community to the world."
Laron syndrome, also known as growth hormone insensitivity, is a genetic mutation that prevents the body from using the growth hormone it produces. It is named after paediatrician Zvi Laron, who identified it 60 years ago while treating patients in Israel. Globally, 840 people are known to have the condition, with the majority living in the southern Ecuadorean provinces of El Oro and Loja.
According to Prof Laron, the mutation originated thousands of years ago in Indonesia and moved west along merchant routes. Sephardic Jews with the mutation later migrated to different continents, including the Americas. They settled in isolated areas, and after generations of marrying within their group, a particularly high incidence is now found in Ecuador.
The twins say living near others with the syndrome helps them cope. "We can tell each other about the things that happen to us, the good and the bad, because we definitely share many of the challenges we have to face every day," explains María del Cisne. However, when they moved away to study, it was more difficult. "They had never seen short persons like us there, so everyone looked at us strangely. They pointed at us. It was odd."
A new research paper documenting all known cases of the mutation identified between 1966 and 2025 is set to be published by Prof Laron later in July. "It is the first time we know the exact number of Laron syndrome patients and the many variants of the growth hormone receptor defects," he tells BBC Mundo.
The twins have been part of a major study led by Dr Guevara, who noticed that the incidence of cancer and diabetes among Laron patients was lower. To determine why, he joined Dr Valter Longo, a specialist in ageing from the University of Southern California, to replicate what happens in the body of a person with Laron syndrome.
First, the scientists studied about 100 individuals with Laron syndrome and about 1,600 relatives of normal height living in the same villages. Over the following 22 years, the team found no cases of diabetes among Ecuadoreans with Laron syndrome and only one case of non-fatal cancer. However, among individuals of normal height, 5% were diagnosed with diabetes and 17% with cancer. Since environmental and other genetic risk factors were assumed to be the same, the researchers concluded that the reason — at least among adults — was the activity of the growth hormone.