24 ms·
Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada
- londons_explore 5y agoI wonder how common diseases like this are that impact just one or just a handful of people?
- andai 5y agoThe long tail...
- londons_explore 5y agoIndeed. You frequently hear "Everyone is different", "Symptoms can vary" and "Everyone acts differently to XYZ treatment". But perhaps these are all symptoms of diseases and combinations of diseases varying, rather than the people?
- Brakenshire 5y ago“ Although rare diseases may be individually rare, they are collectively common, with 1 in 17 people being affected by a rare disease at some point in their lives. ” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-rare-diseases-framework/the-uk-rare-diseases-framework https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-rare-diseases-...
- phendrenad2 5y agoRelated to Havana Syndrome?
- r721 5y agoFrom the article: "Despite patients showing no trace of any known prion diseases, it hasn't been completely ruled out as a cause, he says. Another theory is chronic exposure to what's called an "excitotoxin" like domoic acid, which was linked to a 1987 food poisoning incident from mussels contaminated with the toxin from the nearby province of Prince Edward Island. ... Dr Cashman says they are also looking at another toxin - beta-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) - which has been implicated as an environmental risk in the development of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. BMAA is produced by cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae."
- dmix 5y agoYou get plenty of excitotoxins from eating MSG which may be causing diseases too. The amount of msg in commercial food has doubled the last decade apparently. So much we don’t know about the body and what we put in it.
- GordonS 5y agoI hadn't heard this claim about MSG before. I did a quick search on Google, but didn't find anything that looked remotely reputable. I did a quick search on Google Scholar, and everything seemed to be refuting the claim. Do you have any sources you can share?
- arpa 5y agoYeah, the grandparent is talking out of their rear-end. MSG is well researched and relatively safe. There have been numerous studies refuting the existence of "Chinese restaurant syndrome" and/or attributing the symptoms to allergy to MSG. "Syndrome" was originally a self-reported case study and none subsequent studies with n>10 have been able to replicate the case.
- M2Ys4U 5y agoThe original MSG/CRS "paper" was a hoax. Hell, it wasn't even a paper. It was more along the lines of a letter to the editor, IIRC. But a mixture of sinophobia and alt-med woo spread it far and wide.
- dmix 5y agoApologies for posting this I wish I could delete it
- kossTKR 5y agoPlease source the MSG claim. Asians eat huge amounts of MSG and as far as i know there isn't any pandemic like mystery diseases floating around over there. Highly advanced surveillance systems in South Korea, Japan etc. would be more than able to pick up such things.
- jokoon 5y agoI was scared for a bit. This reminds me that I first read about early cases of covid around october or november 2019.
- drran 5y agoHow and where you were able to read this?
- jokoon 5y agoIt made some news, it was suspicious cases of pneumonia in china. First time I read the article, I was like "uh oh". It did not make the headlines though, but it was still noticeable. I think I spotted it on reddit or hackernews. Maybe the article was on BBC? BBC has quite a good world coverage. I guess you can google news by year. I'm very certain those articles exist. Next time I heard about it, it was getting much worse.
- samirelanduk 5y agoI don't think there were any reports online until December 31st.
- herbst 5y agoI found one (english) Timeline that Starts before 31. https://bfpg.co.uk/2020/04/covid-19-timeline/ https://bfpg.co.uk/2020/04/covid-19-timeline/ I too remember talking about it on Christmas.
- hattmall 5y agoI remember hearing about it prior to that as well. I remember because I was building a shed and had someone helping me who was talking about it and it was prior to the new year, early December at the latest. He heard about it on a Doomsday type podcast.
- carlmr 5y agoAccording to Giuseppe Remuzzi there were strange pneumonia cases in northern Italy in November 2019, but as far as I can see they were not reported until March 2020. Apart from that I remember the first reports from China in December 2019.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hobbescotch 5y agoThe province of New Brunswick has set up a website tracking this here: https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neuro_cluster.html https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/ocmoh/cdc/neu...
- cpncrunch 5y agoInteresting. The symptoms they list are entirely typical of FND, which accounts more than 1 in 7 referrals to a neurology department and is at least as common as MS [1]. They list 48 active cases, but there would presumably be a lot more FND cases than that in NB. Also, it seems they only uncovered this new syndrome when they actively started looking for them via the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System. Could it just be that many doctors and neurologists are unaware of FND, even though it is by far the most common neurological disorder they see? [1] http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/journal/issue/journal_41_1/stone.pdf http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/journal/issue/journal_41_1/stone.pdf
- rvz 5y agoNot this again. I really hope that the incubation period is not around the corner with another wave of vCJD 'variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease' aka (Mad cow disease).
- forgotmypw17 5y agoAs mentioned in previous submissions, because it is happening in a certain area, industrial pollution can be considered as a possible cause as well.
- wobblyasp 5y agoThat was the going assumption as far as I understood (I'm from the area). They're hasn't been direct health advise on areas to avoid either, so it's slightly disconcerting.
- throwaway316943 5y agoBathurst and Moncton are far enough apart that I’d rule that out.
- giantg2 5y agoI would generally agree, except in wonder what the aquifers/groundwater looks like in that region and also the sea water along that coast (likely more of a biological source than an industrial one in that case, I think).
- throwaway316943 5y agoMy bet is on either bacterial or agricultural source contaminating well water.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoWhy do you think that, and what do you mean by "agricultural source"?
- throwaway316943 5y agoWell water contamination is common and people are increasingly neglecting to test on a regular schedule. One of the symptoms listed is gastrointestinal upset which makes me think it could be something that was ingested. They mention that Roger’s condition has stabilized now that he’s in a care home, tenuous but it seems location change resulted in change in progression of symptoms. By agricultural I mean waste from livestock.
- withinboredom 5y agoSince prions can be inhaled via aerosoles[1], I often wonder how long it will be until vaping causes prion diseases to rapidly spread. Or new prions to be introduced. [1]: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001257 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
- sirsinsalot 5y agoWhat on earth does vaping specifically have to do with the aerosol transmission of prions? Unless there are misfolded proteins in the liquid, but that's just as likely as them being in your beef, the air around you, someone chopping meat or anything else. Your vaping reference seems odd.
- withinboredom 5y agoIf (and it's a big if) they were in the liquid, someone walking down the street and hitting their vape could "infect" quite a lot of people. The delay between that point and the onset of symptoms would make it very hard to pinpoint the vape as the cause. It's just interesting to think about.
- shoemakersteve 5y ago> It's just interesting to think about. Is it? Your line of thinking is really confusing to me. The likelihood of this happening by accident is effectively 0%. Even if it was intentional, this makes even less sense. Because then the person would not only have to find some prions to put in their vape, they would also have to inhale it themselves to then blow it into other people's faces? I just really don't understand where you're coming from or why you would say any of this.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoEh? Loads of bad stuff can be inhaled via aerosols so idk why you're mentioning prion diseases specifically. I mean not that long ago there was a lot of 'off the market' e-liquids that would cause popcorn lung.
- peteretep 5y ago> Several patients have presented with transient "Capgras delusion", a psychiatric disorder in which a person believes someone close to them has been replaced by an impostor. > "It's quite disturbing because, for instance, a patient would tell his wife: 'Sorry ma'am you cannot get in bed, I'm a married man' and even if the wife gives her name, he'd say: 'You're not the real one,'" Dr Marrero says. You could spice up a lot of marriages if you could harmlessly cause Capgras delusion for a few hours
- medstrom 5y agoAs long as you induce it consensually, right? It sure would be uncomplicated, no real third party needed.
- regularfry 5y agoThat... wouldn't work. Consent must be continually given, and for Capgras to work you can't be aware it's a delusion at the time you're experiencing it.
- thatguy0900 5y agoI think the idea is that if you wanted to spice up a marriage with an affair, you could use this to "cheat" on your spouse with your spouse. Both parties would be consenting the whole time. One would just think they are cheating.
- regularfry 5y agoOh, I understand the concept. It's broken. If I am "consenting", but not to the action that's actually happening, I am not, in fact, consenting. If I believe that I am consenting to sex with someone that's not my husband, in that moment I am not consenting to sex with my husband. If they then have sex with me, knowing that that is my state of mind, that is non-consensual.
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- sirsinsalot 5y agoPrion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?
- stormdennis 5y agoMany countries would not allow people who lived in the UK during the 80s and 90s to give blood. I ate so many burgers back then too. Our kids after they were born weren't allowed beef for years.
- stuff4ben 5y agoYep I'm one of them. Lived in the UK in the early 80's as a child. Gave blood for the first time when I was in college in the 90's to the Red Cross here in the US, and they mailed me back saying to never give blood again but didn't specify a reason. It wasn't until a few years later that I found out why. And the fact I might have a prion disease lurking in my blood sometimes terrifies me.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoIs there a blood test for that?
- stormdennis 5y ago
- andy_ppp 5y agoI do wonder if it’s possible that vaccines that are designed to make the body produce certain parts of the spike protein could lead to prion diseases accidentally. Are we sure of the proteins coded for and also that this coding can’t produce misfolded proteins? It’s pretty unlikely but also we don’t have long term testing of these proteins in the body. * please note I’ve had the first dose of Astra Zeneca and intend to get the second.
- wobblyasp 5y agoI'm unsure of how vaccines are related here. First case was in 2015, and cases are relatively contained to an area
- devit 5y agoSeems like prions only "infect" the same kind of protein, so a misfolded spike protein that the vaccine might produce would only cause other spike proteins to misfold, and they almost surely don't occur naturally in human tissue so there should be no risk at all.
- andy_ppp 5y agoExcellent explanation I guess the short term effects of producing these proteins is pretty small, that’s good to know.
- anonymouse008 5y agoAs I commented below, I have only drawn loose correlations with no direct evidence as well... so to hear the mechanics of prion misfiling other same proteins is much appreciated.
- anonymouse008 5y agoI’m wondering if the original Covid infection runs the risk for latent prion issues too — There’s just no reason for the mass hysteria from governments from what I’ve seen spread amongst my friends - and I run dangerously close to leaving the “anecdotal data gravity well” with how many observations I’ve tracked, deaths included. It felt like they were withholding some long term effects to keep everyone calm.
- williesleg 5y agofather's health rapidly declined. "He had delusions, hallucinations, weight loss, aggression, repetitive speech," he says Canada...sounds like liberalism disease to me.
- anonuser2 5y agoThoughts on this guys? A potential greater risk of prions from the covid vaccine (Therapeutic) https://www.scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf https://www.scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines...
- medstrom 5y agoYou really want to give anti-vaxxers more ammo over a "potential risk"? But welcome to HN.
- anonuser2 5y agoYeah, well unfortunately there are anti-vaxxers but people who have genuine concerns over the long term safety of a completely experimental vaccine will be labeled as antivaxx to.
- medstrom 5y agoYes, it's a terrible idea to label them that way, so let's not. Still, we all bear some responsibility in keeping society sane, which might mean just declining to talk about evidence like this until it's solid.
- m1aw 5y agoNew account, publication is made by someone @vaccines.net which claims the following "We are concerned that the current outbreak of COVID-19 is actually a bioweapon attack and may be linked to the US anthrax attack of 2001, which originated from the US army base Fort Detrick." The publication has not been peer reviewed, and quotes several times articles published by the original author with similar claims. Are we spread miss information in HN now too?
- anonuser2 5y agoHow is it misinfo? I am just saying it is a potential risk as you litterly fold proteins. What's wrong with questioning something completely experimental? Sure, it needs to be looked into more not a definite it is causing prions but could be a risk in the future.
- callamdelaney 5y agoThere was some research which suggested that a not insignificant number of dementia cases were actually misdiagnosed mad cow disease. Because CJD can stick around for a while without taking affect, I wouldn't be surprised.
- throwaway316943 5y agoThe age range starts at 18 for this outbreak.
- psyc 5y agoThis is a running gag for William Shatner’s character in Boston Legal.
- HDMI_Cable 5y agoI'm not a neurologist but maybe some of the prions from Mad Cow Disease can further the progression of dementia?
- tcbawo 5y agoI know someone in their early 40s experiencing dementia-type symptoms (consistent with frontotemporal dementia). It is early but is quickly getting worse. It's heartbreaking to see how this is affecting his spouse and children. So far, they don't have a diagnosis. They are still running tests. It has to be quite frustrating not to be able to point to a root cause. So little can be known without direct access to the brain.
- nick_ 5y agoI have read a couple of times that an HSV infection (super common) can get into the brain and cause dementia. Just trying to help here, but maybe they could try an HSV antiviral?
- GioM 5y agoThe forests of New Brunswick are routinely sprayed with large amounts of glyphosphate herbicide. Is it possible that this is the cause, instead of prions? [1] https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/where-our-forest-is-being-sprayed-this-summer-2019/ https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/where-our-forest-is-being... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberals-greens-glyphosate-spraying-election-forestry-1.5706309 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberals-greens... [3] https://nben.ca/en/component/tags/tag/glyphosate-ban https://nben.ca/en/component/tags/tag/glyphosate-ban [4] http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/?page_id=118 http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/?page_id=118
- bluGill 5y agoNo, glyphosphate is used in a lot of different places and is well studied. There are the usual conspiracy theories but the science is pretty strong.
- rubicon33 5y agoWhat science are you referring to? The most I've heard about it is the Bayer lawsuit. "A San Francisco jury initially awarded Johnson $289.2 million after finding the chemical glyphosate in Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma" [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/bayer-appeals-20-5-million-roundup-ruling-to-california-supreme-court-idUSKBN25T0BX https://www.reuters.com/article/bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/bay...
- bluGill 5y agoA jury trial is not science. Juries tend to be swayed by emotions and sticking it go big companies not right. (I can't offer you anything better to replace them though ) There have been many real scientific studies done. https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-finalizes-glyphosate-mitigation https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-finalizes-glyphosate-miti... is the most readable summary
- rubicon33 5y ago
- anthony_romeo 5y agoIn other Prion news, there's a prion disease, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), affecting populations of wild Deer, Elk, etc. in North America and other chunks of the world. It's not yet known to infect people, but please be careful when eating wild game. [1] My mind first went to this issue when I read the headline, though upon reading the article it's probably something else, as CWD isn't really a thing in that region [it's more of a Mountain state kind of thing thing]. And, of course, I'm not a prion expert, so I only vaguely know what I'm writing about. [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/food-safety/food-related-illnesses/chronic-wasting-disease.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutriti...
- loonster 5y agoCWD is in 25 states now. Some of them have cattle. https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html
- eganp 5y agoThe species barrier in prion transmission appear very strong [0]. Transmitting a prion from a hamster into a mouse often takes multiple passages of direct in brain inoculation. In these closely related species, perhaps it's less strong. It's doubtful that CWD can transmit to humans at typical exposure levels. In vitro, conversion of human PrP is possible, but exceedingly difficult. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736662/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2736662/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5667731/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5667731/
- admash 5y agoCompounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease. In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built to USDA specifications. But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was "not scientifically warranted." https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-ftf051506.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-ftf0515...
- admash 5y agoThe “fun” question is whether prions are present in milk and other dairy products. One might argue that they are not, by virtue of them being largely localized to neural tissue. Of course, this raises the question of how CWD is being transmitted in elk, since elk don’t eat elk. “Scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) likely spread between animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through environmental contamination of soil, food or water.” https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/transmission.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/transmission.html Milk is clearly a body fluid, though is curiously absent from the above statement. And as other comments about the difficulty of sterilizing prions make clear, pasteurization will have no effect.
- fareesh 5y agoI lived in Fredericton for about 7 years and have been around the province a bit. The air in Moncton is definitely unusual. I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with it.
- kgin 5y agoInteresting. In what way is the air unusual?
- fareesh 5y agoIt is malodorous
- w0de0 5y agoAh, it must be malaria!
- JPLeRouzic 5y agoCould it be the smell of cyanobacteria[1], gathered by tidal bore from the Petitcodiac river[2], specifically by Hall's creek reservoir[3]? "This reservoir has experienced cyanobacteria algal blooms for many years due to high levels of nutrients combined with a lack of water velocity from damming." [1] https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/algal_toxins/algal_faq.html https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/algal_toxins/algal_faq.ht... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncton#Tidal_bore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncton#Tidal_bore [3] http://www.petitcodiacwatershed.org/?page_id=302&lang=en http://www.petitcodiacwatershed.org/?page_id=302&lang=en
- fareesh 5y agoYeah it is definitely something in the water that's awful, the smell is especially pronounced close to it.
- ilamont 5y agoOne of the questions used to screen blood donors in the U.S. is whether they lived in the U.K. in the early 1990s. If you answer "yes," you can't donate. The reason is the outbreak there of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka "mad cow disease") and the human variant mentioned in the article, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) which may lie dormant for decades IIRC.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoprions - scary shit.
- dnautics 5y ago> CJD test came back negative So a CJD test is usually staining a biopsy with congo red and observing apple-green birefringence in the image. This generally works to detect amyloid plaques, which is common to all prions. So unless there was a lab mistake, the prion is localized elsewhere from where the biopsies are being done (FFI, for example, localizes to a different part of the brain) or they were using some other procedure, it's seems pretty unlikely this is a prion disease.
- omgwtfbbq 5y agoAre there other tests to determine prion disease related brain degeneration? Seems hard to believe they can't identify at all what the cause is.
- eganp 5y agoIntracranial inoculation of infected tissue is the old-school way to assay for prion activity. Sometimes it takes a few years to get an answer though, especially in cross-species assays [0]. [0] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5338-3_9 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5338-3_...
- jonnycomputer 5y agoSo what I've read, suggests that prions do not degrade in the environment very readily. A deer with prion disease can die, decompose, then the prions be absorbed into the vegetation to be re-transmitted to other deer. Naively it would seem that there could be an ongoing accumulation of prions in the environment. This makes me think of fire policy. Although prions are resistant to temperatures of 200C or so, wildfires often reach much higher temperatures. It would seem, again naively, that a regular regime of fire (e.g. controlled burns) might curtail any such accumulation (as well as have benefits to fire-adapted and fire-dependent plant species). I'm not sure if controlled burns are ever allowed to get that hot though.