EXCLUSIVE: ASTONISHING SIDE EFFECT OF SCOT'S RARE GENETIC ILLNESS
Treatment turned grey hair dark and smoothed wrinkles
A GRANDAD suffering from a rare disease has found a bizarre side effect to his treatment - it makes him look 20 years younger.
Reggie Myles, 62, feared he would be crippled for life after being struck down by the genetic disorder Porphyria Cutanea Tarda.
He lost his mop of grey hair, his weight dropped to just seven stones and even the simplest tasks such as making a cup of tea became impossible.
He was put on a gruelling regime of treatments including steroids and radiation therapy but his doctors were stunned when his hair grew back dark brown and his wrinkles disappeared.
Reggie said the change is so dramatic that people think his wife Rosemary's got a toyboy.
The retired sales boss, of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, said: "When people comment on how young I look I don't feel flattered, I just feel incredibly lucky. Before I couldn't even lift the telephone and now I can do bits of housework and even go fishing with my sons and play with my grandchildren.
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"If people think I look like my sons, I take it inmy stride and hope it doesn't upsetmy boys too much.
"I was at the golf club the other day and a friend of mine of 30 years didn't recognise me.
"I started chatting to him and he just nodded along completely unable to place me.
"I just think it's so funny."
Reggie's condition was triggered by a build-up of iron in his liver that causes ulcers and blisters to form on the skin. It can lie dormant until middle age.
This caused him to get widespread Sclorederma, another skin condition, which made his skin stiffen and seize up.
Reggie, a granddad-of-five, takes 15 tablets a day, has to use special ointment and had UVA radiation therapy for several weeks before his hair began growing back last August.
He said: "My wife noticed my hair was coming back because she has to put an ointment on me twice a day. She said the hairs were sprouting back but said they were dark brown.
"I thought nothing of it until more grew back and I realised I had shed most of my wrinkles, too.
"My wife is a young-looking 59-year-old but now when we have been out people say to her, 'And this must be your toyboy?'"
Reggie is now regularly mistaken for one of his two sons, Colin, 41, and Craig, 37.
Yet just 18 months ago, Reggie's family had thought he was at death's door. His weight had plummeted from 161/2 stones to just seven and he was admitted to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee to be monitored by specialists.
Reggie said: "When I was at my worst, I had lost half my body weight and all my hair.
"I could not move my body from my waist up because the skin had tightened up so severely. Things went downhill from there.
"The doctors didn't know exactly what was wrong and I feared the worst, thinking I had cancer.
"I was lying in Ninewells and no one could recognise me because I was so frail.
"Now I have a similar problem - some of my oldest friends can't recognise me because I look so much younger. It's some journey I've been on."
Medical students have filmed Reggie's progress and want to present him as a case study during a medical conference in London.
He has also been told he may appear in medical journal The Lancet.
Rosemary, a shop assistant, said: "I am so glad he is better because it was devastating to watch him when he first took ill. It changed his whole personality.
"We've been married for 41 years and when people who have known him all his life don't recognise him, I have to laugh."
One in 6000 Scots are thought to suffer some form of Porphyria Cutanea Tarda.
Dr Robert Dawe, a consultant dermatologist at Ninewells, said: "It is incredibly unusual for dark hair to return on a sufferer after the condition has been controlled.
"The wrinkles may have been reduced as a side effect of the Sclorederma, which tightens up the skin.
"I am delighted with Reggie's progress and his recovery, especially considering how severe his symptoms were and how rapidly they developed.
"We are now concentrating on reducing his steroid intake.
"What happened to Reggie is incredibly unusual and the same circumstances could give a completely different result in another person."
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