Werner's syndrome: twenty-four cases with a review of the Japanese medical literature.

Twenty-four cases of Werner's syndrome were studied to define the clinical manifestations in comparison with those found in a clinical review of 153 cases in the Japanese medical literature. The conspicuous characteristics of the 24 patients were short stature, stocky trunk with thin limbs, low body weight, bird-like or "masked" face, early graying or loss of hair, high-pitched or hoarse voice, bilateral cataracts, and various scleroderma-like signs. Three signs not stressed previously were hyperreflexia, flat feet, and irregular dental development. The onsets and incidences of these manifestations during the seven-year serial study are described.