Islamabad: Medical specialists in Pakistan are trying to solve a highly puzzling case of three children afflicted by a mysterious ailment linked to the movement of the sun.

Energetic after the sun rises, they are forced into near lifeless stillness when it sets, according to media reports.

Hailing from a village in southwestern Balochistan province, the male minors named Shoaib, Rashid and Ilyas have been admitted to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).

At 4am, they rise with the first rays, filled with energy and life. As the sun travels west, their strength appears to deplete, and by the time it sets, they are completely paralysed.

Chancellor of PIMS Dr Javed Akram, quoted by a newspaper, said theirs is the first reported case of such an illness across the world.

“It is a challenging puzzle for medical science to solve,” Akram says: bodies synced to the movement of the sun.

The children’s father Hashim, a security guard at a university in Balochistan’s capital, Quetta, says his sons were born like this, according to the report in daily ‘Dawn’.

He says their bodies appeared to be dependent on sunlight. When villagers heard about them, they were amazed, and they were christened ‘solar kids’.

But not all of his kids have earned that title. Hashim, who married his first cousin, have three more children — two girls and a boy who have escaped the peculiar condition.

Dr Akram claims he has never heard of the condition. “It is a peculiar disease which pushes children into a vegetative state after sunset. We have taken it up as a research project.”

His team is working with a team of 27 Pakistanis and 13 international members to solve the case. He hopes to treat the mysterious illness, but first, they have to make a successful diagnosis.

PIMS has sent blood samples and test reports to 13 international collaborators, including Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medical Institute in the US, and Guys Hospital in London. Hundreds of tests have been carried out, but to no avail.

“We’re lucky their illness has not worsened with time,” the father says.