Doctors Investigate Mystery Brain Disease in Canada (bbc.com) 114
Doctors in Canada have been coming across patients showing symptoms similar to that of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare fatal condition that attacks the brain. From a report on BBC, shared by several readers: But when they took a closer look, what they found left them stumped. Almost two years ago, Roger Ellis collapsed at home with a seizure on his 40th wedding anniversary. In his early 60s, Mr Ellis, who was born and raised around New Brunswick's bucolic Acadian peninsula, had been healthy until that June, and was enjoying his retirement after decades working as an industrial mechanic. His son, Steve Ellis, says after that fateful day his father's health rapidly declined. "He had delusions, hallucinations, weight loss, aggression, repetitive speech," he says. "At one point he couldn't even walk. So in the span of three months we were being brought to a hospital to tell us they believed he was dying - but no one knew why."
Roger Ellis' doctors first suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD]. CJD is a human prion disease, a fatal and rare degenerative brain disorder that sees patients present with symptoms like failing memory, behavioural changes and difficulties with co-ordination. One widely known category is Variant CJD, which is linked to eating contaminated meat infected with mad cow disease. CJD also belongs to a wider category of brain disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS, in which protein in the nervous system become misfolded and aggregated. But Mr Ellis' CJD test came back negative, as did the barrage of other tests his doctors put him through as they tried to pinpoint the cause of his illness. His son says the medical team did their best to alleviate his father's varying symptoms but were still left with a mystery: what was behind Mr Ellis's decline? In March of this year, the younger Mr Ellis came across a possible -- if partial -- answer.
Radio-Canada, the public broadcaster, obtained a copy of a public health memo that had been sent to the province's medical professionals warning of a cluster of patients exhibiting an unknown degenerative brain disease. "The first thing I said was: 'This is my dad,'" he recalls. Roger Ellis is now believed to be one of those afflicted with the illness and is under the care of Dr Alier Marrero. The neurologist with Moncton's Dr Georges-L-Dumont University Hospital Centre says doctors first came across the baffling disease in 2015. At the time it was one patient, an "isolated and atypical case," he says. But since then there have been more patients like the first -- enough now that doctors have been able to identify the cluster as a different condition or syndrome "not seen before". The province says it's currently tracking 48 cases, evenly split between men and women, in ages ranging from 18 to 85. Those patients are from the Acadian Peninsula and Moncton areas of New Brunswick. Six people are believed to have died from the illness.
Roger Ellis' doctors first suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD]. CJD is a human prion disease, a fatal and rare degenerative brain disorder that sees patients present with symptoms like failing memory, behavioural changes and difficulties with co-ordination. One widely known category is Variant CJD, which is linked to eating contaminated meat infected with mad cow disease. CJD also belongs to a wider category of brain disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS, in which protein in the nervous system become misfolded and aggregated. But Mr Ellis' CJD test came back negative, as did the barrage of other tests his doctors put him through as they tried to pinpoint the cause of his illness. His son says the medical team did their best to alleviate his father's varying symptoms but were still left with a mystery: what was behind Mr Ellis's decline? In March of this year, the younger Mr Ellis came across a possible -- if partial -- answer.
Radio-Canada, the public broadcaster, obtained a copy of a public health memo that had been sent to the province's medical professionals warning of a cluster of patients exhibiting an unknown degenerative brain disease. "The first thing I said was: 'This is my dad,'" he recalls. Roger Ellis is now believed to be one of those afflicted with the illness and is under the care of Dr Alier Marrero. The neurologist with Moncton's Dr Georges-L-Dumont University Hospital Centre says doctors first came across the baffling disease in 2015. At the time it was one patient, an "isolated and atypical case," he says. But since then there have been more patients like the first -- enough now that doctors have been able to identify the cluster as a different condition or syndrome "not seen before". The province says it's currently tracking 48 cases, evenly split between men and women, in ages ranging from 18 to 85. Those patients are from the Acadian Peninsula and Moncton areas of New Brunswick. Six people are believed to have died from the illness.
Re:How Rude (Score:5, Interesting)
Illegal dumping of something neurotoxic or a nerve agent, like from an industrial process as an intermediate step.
That's my entry to the betting pool. It screams environmental with the timing and locality and patient distribution.
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a disease caused by cliimate change that only hit two areas in NE Brunswick and no where else?
Seems the disease would pop up elsewhere too if that were the case. Sure, both places near the ocean and eat lots of seafood, but then so do many many other cities near there
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I think that was a joke.
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Well remote possibility, say if algae bloom or thing that fed on it spread disease
Re:How Rude (Score:5, Interesting)
Quoting from the article (not many here appear to have read it)
So it seems likely that it is something in the water, and that it could well have to do with rising temperatures - we have increasing incidence of BMAA in the area where I live and here it is temperature related.
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That's a better, shorter, more informative summary than the front page. Thank you.
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Dr Cashman cautions the current list of theories "is not complete".
"We have to go back to first principles, go back to square one," he says. "At this point basically nothing can be excluded."
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So it seems likely that it is something in the water, and that it could well have to do with rising temperatures
Or it could be space aliens. They don't know if it's water, air, food, genetic, pathogens or something else they haven't thought of. No reason to jump straight to global warming.
Re: How Rude (Score:2)
It's quite easy to denature proteins.
They are only held in their higher structure by weak van-den-Walls forces.
Heat above 42 degrees Celsius, acids, bases, whipping, radiation, and a ton of chemicala have a really easy time with them, if they manage to get through them.
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You can't return BAReFO0t goop. No shirt, no shoes, no service.
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Mad Canadian Disease
They call it hockey you insensitive clod.
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He was also married for 40 years. Maybe that was the trigger.
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Early 60s is getting up there, to be sure, but a surprising number of people manage to get through their 60s without being afflicted by a rare brain disorder. Further, I've recently received information that people as young as 18 are being affected. (That's when happens when you can be bothered to read to the end of the summary. Obtaining important information, not contracting a disease, just to be clear.)
Still, your valuable insight/hot take is duly noted.
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early 60's is too young to retire, most people are still working at that age.
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Canada, you can start collecting CPP (Canada Pension Plan) at 60 if you don't mind the reduced benefits, lots of people do. And who knows what else in the way of pensions or savings he had. As an industrial mechanic, he may have had good pay and benefits including a pension from work as well as likely paying the max into CPP for 40 odd years.
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Reduced benefits is the definition of too young to retire. some people do take early retirement because of complications in life, a sick spouse or losing a job late in life makes it hard to get hired. But most people, if they have a solid job and no external factors, will choose to keep working well into their 60's.
Of course, for a fire fighter and other jobs with high occupational hazards, 60 is way past retirement age.
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Guess it really depends on how the body is, how finances are and how good the job is. Most of the people I know who retired at 60 didn't have that good of jobs that they wanted to stick with it. I know with age that if I was doing anything too physical, I'd be sorely tempted to retire at 60.
Do we let the clueless talk again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop making even more diseases that aren't caused by old age into ones that "are"!
"Old age" is not the cause of disease. It is merely a shit excuse.
Ask any doctor: There is no such thing as "natural causes" for death.
Cardiovascular diseases, dementia, arthritis, even hair loss have NOTHING whatsoever to do with old age.
Only hair graying and skin wrinkling can legitimately be called "due to old age", even though that still is just a lazy excuse that hides the underlying actual problems.
If you have no clue wh
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The province says it's currently tracking 48 cases, evenly split between men and women, in ages ranging from 18 to 85
Not every day an 18 year old has a new type of degenerative brain disease that seems to be affecting a cluster of people, indicating it was environmental.
Re: How Rude (Score:2)
I'm sure Trump was constructed before 2015.
Kuru (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Kuru (Score:4, Informative)
Cannibalism is bad, mmmm'kay?
Cannibalism will spread prions but is not necessary. CWD [wikipedia.org] occurs in deer and elk just from proximity. Some animals caught CWD just from being in pens used by infected animals the prior year.
CWD is not known to occur in New Brunswick. It may just be undetected, or there may be some other prion in the area.
Well come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Fellow armchair scientists. Tell me the doctors are looking at the data wrong or don't know their ass from their elbow. Please I need to hear your half cocked bullshit answers.
"It's definitely not aliens" (Score:2)
This is my best Slashdot assumption.
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Well I found this review online for this doctor:
"My son has been waiting 1 year and 3 months for test results after being told it would be 2-3 months. Now his secretary is saying that some people wait 2 years!!! I am more than fed up with this but what is a person to do??? Ok, so maybe not his fault that the tests are extremely late but don't tell your patient 2-3 months waiting period. As far as the rating system on this site, how is a person really to know much about the doctors "knowledge". The patient i
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Please.
There would be far more patients if that were the case.
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Fellow armchair scientists. Tell me the doctors are looking at the data wrong or don't know their ass from their elbow. Please I need to hear your half cocked bullshit answers.
I'd be willing to bet that they haven't tried hydroxychloroquine yet. They really should. Despite every shred of empirical evidence from reputable sources suggesting it's ineffective against anything other than what it's been used to treat for decades, I've heard from the fine folks here that when it's paired with zinc/z-pac/zebras and a dosage that's low/high/normal over a typical/shorter/longer period in which the patient additionally receives UV treatment/mainlines bleach/stops listening to anyone saying
Re: Well come on (Score:2)
Hello, fellow armchair expert on judging our expertise!
PROTIP: Since you are not an expert eothemmu
...continued... (Score:2)
Since you are not an an expert, you are not able to tell if amything is expertise or bullshit.
Dunning-Kruger effect's a bitch that way.
Re: Well come on (Score:2)
One's a kind of horse thingy, but I don't have one, and the other I have two of on my arms... it's easy to tell the difference.
Environment. (Score:2)
Check environmental factors. Any kind of Love Canals? Any kind of job similarities? Any beaver contamination?
Re: Environment. (Score:2)
That's how you get beaver contaminations!
You wash away the dominating good micro-organisms, giving a level playing field and a fighting chance to the bad ones.
Ditto with disinfectants.
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It may be some sort of bacteria that is present in Maple Syrup. Much like bacteria that exists in honey that might be harmful to babies, which is why you don't give honey to babies.
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what makes you think people in NB can afford maple syrup?
...wait, what??
It literally grows on (in) trees!
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I can tell you've never made maple syrup, it takes multiple buckets of maple sap to make a liter of syrup. Boiling off that much water takes a huge amount of heat over a long time.
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I guess my joke fell a bit flat there.
Even so, making maple syrup is a labour, but hardly an expense. Paying someone else to do the labour (i.e., buying it ready-made in a shop) doesn't mean it can't be done relatively cheaply yourself.
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My dad heated their house in the winter mostly by wood, a pan on top of the wood stove was the humidifier, with tap water in it most of the winter and maple sap in the spring. About as cheap as you can get.
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what makes you think people in NB can afford maple syrup?
Maple Syrup is cheaper in New Brunswick than at your local Supermarket. You can literally buy it directly from the producers, ensuring that you are getting the real stuff and not something that is watered down in any way. So, yes, people who live in New Brunswick can afford Maple Syrup, and the good stuff too....
The only comparable Maple Syrup that I can find on the store shelves is Grade A amber from Maine. If you have ever had New Brunswick Maple Syrup, you would understand why New Brunswicker's refer
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Granted it is cheaper than the USA, but still, it's expensive. but the dollar discount isn't going to keep me from moving away.
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Deer have CWD (Score:2)
It's probably a mutant of Chronic Wasting Disease. It's spreading across the deer herds.
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Lazlo Z?
I thought Leroy Jones had solved that one.
action myoclonus-renal failure syndrome (Score:2)
There is this rare illness in Québec too, degenerative brain, called action myoclonus-renal failure syndrome, that looks like this
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Oh my God. It has spread to Quebec??? Quick, everyone inside!!!
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I think it's caused by a lifetime speaking Quebecois instead of French, rots the brain.
Too many Timbits (Score:2)
Fungus or other toxin from the shore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Peninsula, climate change, etc. It could be that conditions have changed and resulted in an increase in some fungus or other agent that in years past wouldn't have reproduced as much. Wiki says New Brunswick has been having more Winter thaws. The whole province wouldn't be affected if it's just something that lives on the shores of the peninsula. Examine the heck out of slides of their nasal tissue. Maybe you'll get lucky and find hyphae. Just a crazy guess, but since even the doctors don't know, my guess is as good as theirs.
Also, what do they eat locally? Maybe it's like ergotism and the fungus itself is not getting in to their systems, but toxins from it are. If not everybody eats the food that's tainted, they won't all get it. Of course this can have a genetic component too. Find out what they ate, dig in to their ancestry. More data. Nothing happens without a reason.
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Do they need help from citizens? (Score:2)
All those terrible jokes on brain-dead Canadians aside (they are, but they do not deserve this). I hope that they'll find soon by what it is caused, guessing some toxin, alike the article says they guess too.
Could this be helped by citizen science where people would try to find out the paths of the toxins (assuming it is that way)? Like, say, it is done for the contact tracing.
The Sad Thing Is (Score:2)
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Previous Coverage (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a link to the previous article: Leaked Memo Reveals Concerning New Brain Disease In Canada [slashdot.org].
In fairness to the slashdot moderators (it was BeauHD that posted the first article and msmash who gave us the second), the earlier post gives us a link to a piece in the UK's Guardian Newspaper/web site, while this post is covering reporting from the BBC.
Interesting to see that it took the BBC a month - more to notice... Keep up, Aunty Beeb, keep up!
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Tick borne perhaps? (Score:5, Informative)
Bad news if it spreads that way because it's even worse than Lyme and tick fever (which ruined my wife's life) and are already ample reasons to avoid exposure. They are often misdiagnosed as this new disease will be so you should be an active patient.
Stay out of the woods unless you must enter them, use Permethrin on your tall hiking boots, long pants, shirt and hat, and DEET the fuck out of exposed skin. Shit's no joke, any of it. Clear brush on your property and deny them hiding places. Ensure your pets are treated with tick and flea killer.
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Quite certain permethrin and DEET are also neurotoxins. They could also be the problem.
Re:Tick borne perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both have been well studied by the military as part of their tick-borne disease control program. I'll take any of the symptoms attributed to either over Lyme or tick fever. DEET has been banned in some areas but like DDT is a trade-off. Ideally humans and our domestic critters could avoid infested areas completely but that's often impractical (though not for me as I cut generous firebreaks and stay out of brush and woods completely unless I'm there to cut them down).
Natrapel is a recent military option.
https://www.army.mil/article/1... [army.mil]
""The importance of having an alternative available to DEET is to improve compliance of DoD personnel wearing repellents when in areas where they are at risk of disease from biting insects," said Dr. Kendra Lawrence, senior scientific consultant for the Pharmaceutical Systems Project Management office at USAMMDA. "Those who are happy with DEET will continue using it, while those who aren't will have a choice and they may be more inclined to reach for that choice and protect themselves."
Natrapel® is a pump spray topical repellent with 20 percent Picaridin, a synthetic compound derived from the same plant family as the table seasoning black pepper. Developed in 1998, Picaridin has been a top-rated and widely used active ingredient in Europe and Australia, making its debut in the United States in 2005.
In 2006, researchers at WRAIR began to evaluate Natrapel® and other non-DEET repellents as possible alternatives to Ultrathon, the military's standard, DEET-based repellent since 1990.
"Although Ultrathon is a highly efficacious repellent, we had anecdotal evidence that many soldiers were not using it, citing a greasy feel, pungent odor or unfounded claims of toxicity," says John Paul Benante, an investigator for the Entomology Branch at WRAIR. "We wanted to provide soldiers with a DEET-free alternative repellent that also offered excellent protection."
Re:Tick borne perhaps? (Score:4, Interesting)
> Lyme and tick fever (which ruined my wife's life)
Sorry to hear that. Since I can't mod you up any higher though, I'll add a voice to support that part instead:
About 15 years ago, I got bitten by what was (retroactively) apparently a tick, didn't think anything of it (I live in a rural area, insect bites are part of the package) and rapidly got KO'd by lethargy and pain. My doctor failed to diagnose it correctly, and the symptoms continued for *months* until they eventually, finally, passed "on their own".
I was "lucky", in that it "only" cost me months of my life and a ton of expenses and lost income. (I was contracting at the time, so, yknow, also no medical insurance, GO USA!).
As you say, it's no joke. I've always been healthy and athletic, and I was even more so back then. If it could hit then-me that hard I can well believe that it could easily be devastating to anyone who was less fortunate.
Duplicate post (Score:2)
Reality TV (Score:1)
Definitely a disease. Currently finishing up the complete replacement of journalism/news.
You reap what you sow (Score:2, Interesting)
Gee I wonder why people are getting sick.
Based on my extensive analysis of the headline (Score:1)
Melatonin (Score:1)
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By all means, squander your resources to investigate ALL stuff, however implausible, and not focus on the three most plausible things to do. Great advice to give your enemies!
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from the parent post:
"Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous ultra violet or just very powerful light," ... [Trump] said, looking toward Bryan and Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. "And I think you said that hasn't been checked but you are going to test it."
from the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology:
"Ultraviolet blood irradiation: Is it time to remember “the cure that time forgot [nih.gov]”?
UV therapy had proven generally effective against infectious disease and had been working its way into widespread use prior to the advent of antibiotic treatment. To posit that it might also work against Covid seems in bounds.
In fact, his conjecture later turned out to be a good one:
Ultraviolet light therapy reduces viral load in critically [news-medical.net]
Re: Won't be able to detect brain disease in the U (Score:2)
Of course Trump could never catch it.
That requires *having* a brain!
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Re: COVID related? (Score:2)
"pre-covid"... do we know when covid started now?
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Well, you already voted for a lifelong crook who only became a politician temporarily. At least Biden has had the perseverance to stay with a single scam and do it well,
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My guess is it is COVID related.
My guess is that—despite all the things it is capable of doing—COVID can't time travel back to 2015 to infect patient zero.
Re: COVID related? (Score:2)
Unless it was already there... 4 years is quite a big jump, but traces of the virus are being found indicating it was around earlier and earlier.