Shock as girl's muscles turn to bone while identical twin is unaffected

Identical 12-year-old twin sisters with the same genetic mutation have ended up with very different lives, with the muscles of one being transformed into bone while the other is developing normally.

However, only Cayetana suffers from the effects of the condition, while Celia has next to no symptoms, newspaperPOH is a genetic condition that causes skin, muscle and fat tissue to slowly transform into bone, or ossify. This can cause ulcers to appear across the body at the sites of bone formation, and be incredibly painful, eventually turning joints and limbs to bone. The only treatment available is surgery to remove newly forming bone plaques.

POH was only discovered in 1994, by Fred Kaplan of the University of Pennsylvania. He was studying 125 patients with, a similar but different condition that causes bone to form where it shouldn't, often known as"stone man disease." "It seemed like a perfect experiment: two identical people, one sick and the other healthy, but it's not being so obvious," pediatrician Federico Martinón Torres, who co-leads the group investigating the sisters, toldThe exact reason for the difference in their symptoms has not yet been found but researchers have a number of theories.

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