SYNDROME, PRADER-WILLI

A condition in children with floppiness (hypotonia), obesity, small hands and feet and mental retardation. It is due to loss of part or all of chromosome 15, specifcally the chromosome 15 from the father. The "fat and red-faced boy in a state of somnolency" described by Charles Dickens in his novel The Pickwick Papers is thought by some to have had Prader-Willi syndrome. (The same boy inspired the naming of the Pickwickian syndrome).