The cause of Tree-man Dede Koswara's strange growths discovered?

For 20 years, the warts studding Dede Kosawa's hands and feet multiplied and sprouted like gnarled roots

His hands looked like contorted, yellow-brown branches extending 3 feet. Unable to clamp his hands into a fist or pick up a fork, he made his living by performing in carnivals in rural Indonesia. He became known as the Treeman.

"His life was taken away from him," said Dr. Anthony Gaspari, an American dermatologist who traveled twice to Indonesia to treat Kosawa. "He was severely disfigured and was sent into a rural isolated village where he was sheltered from his peers. With good reason, he was a sad man. He wanted to be cured and he wanted hope."

The growths encrusting his arms accounted for nearly 12 pounds of his 100-pound body. Kosawa, 36, often became exhausted after taking a few steps because of the dense warts on his feet. The growths that carpeted his limbs were posing more problems.

"He was getting infected," said Gaspari, chief of dermatology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. "He had insects living in the base of the wood-like material." More...

See also:

• Indonesian woman has metal wires growing out of her body...
• Dede Koswara, the Tree-Man. A video documentary...
• Merdya Abdisa, the Ethiopian whose eye has "popped out" because of a tumour...
• The Life of Huang Chu Chai...
• The man without a face...