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"King Kong" (aka Yu Zhenhuan) is a modern equivalent, with his own media presence
"King Kong" (aka Yu Zhenhuan) is a modern equivalent, with his own media presence
A new study of the patient known as "KK" - one of the world's hairiest men - and three families with a history of CGHT suggests that the disease is caused by vast genomic changes on chromosome 17.
CGHT is exceedingly rare, with fewer than 100 cases documented in news reports and the scientific literature, says Xue Zhang, a geneticist at Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, who led the new study.
The disease is one of at least several forms of hypertrichosis - all characterised by overgrowth of hair. One of the earliest recorded cases involved a Mexican Indian woman, Julia Pastrana, who toured Europe in the 1850s and 60s, before dying due to complications from childbirth.
