Mild Phenotype

Now, I am not saying my friend has PWS, but...

Last night we had dinner with a close friend of ours (best man at our wedding). He has an undergraduate degree from Duke and a masters in education, and is a gifted high school teacher who has won several awards for his teaching. He was always weak as a child. He is completely out of touch with his body. He rarely experiences pain and doctors were shocked to discover that he had a dislocated shoulder and he had barely noticed it. He never feels hunger or fullness. He is obsessive compulsive but has harnessed it and therefore is not pathologically so. His father died young from a heart attack so he has to carefully watch his diet. He eats the same food every day on schedule. He exercises religiously. He is a bit slow to start something but when he fixes his eyes on a goal he always excels.

We were all commenting on how his cluster of "quirks" really resemble the PWS traits. While I fantasize about the idea of him being a highly functional person with PWS, I don't actually believe it is possible. Instead, I wonder if he doesn't have decreased expression of some of the same genes that are impacted by PWS.