US 'mermaid' girl dies aged 10

Doctors had predicted she would at most survive for only days after her birth. The girl died at Maine Medical Centre on Friday afternoon, hospital spokesman John Lamb said. She had been in hospital in a critical condition for nearly a week.

Being born with "mermaid syndrome", also known as sirenomelia, meant that the Kennebunkport girl had only one partially working kidney, no lower colon or genital organs and legs fused from the waist down.

Some children who have survived sirenomelia have had surgery to separate their legs, but Shiloh did not because blood vessels crossing from side to side in her circulatory system would have been severed. She had received two kidney transplants, the last one in 2007.

Her story was featured recently on The Oprah Winfrey Show and other national television programs.

This month her mother, Leslie Pepin, said her daughter came down with a cold that quickly turned to pneumonia. Shiloh was rushed to Maine Medical Centre on October 10 and was placed on antibiotics and a ventilator.