8 ms·
Toxic black mold is growing in my brain
- vmception 5y ago> I hate thinking that this whole chapter of my life was because I didn’t have enough air pressure in my bicycle tires. It has to mean more. When your mystical purpose is unremarkable.
- carlmr 5y agoIf the drugs can't enter due to the BBB isn't the only chance to prime his immune system to handle it? Maybe another use case for specialized mRNA vaccines?
- eternityforest 5y agoWhy can't the put drugs directly on the other side of the barrier? Or is it not a physical thing with sides like that?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- penjelly 5y agopretty sure you cant inject drugs directly into your brain
- meepmorp 5y agoThey can and do put drugs directly on the other side of the barrier. Intrathecal administration typically uses an infusion pump to put drugs directly into the cerebrospinal fluid. Pain meds are a common use case, as well as some chemotherapy drugs. It's a somewhat risky MOA, as the likely path of infection will proceed immediately to the life threatening stage, which means not many drugs are approved by this route.
- sjg007 5y agoDoctors can do intrathecal antifungal administration. I wonder if this guy has tried that.
- mateo1 5y agoThe blood brain barrier is the walls of the arteries. Perhaps you can "inject" something in the interstitial fluid but I imagine the volume would be tiny and fluid motion very slow.
- benibela 5y agoI really should clean up the black mold in my apartment
- throwuxiytayq 5y agoJesus, I can't read this, it's too much. Poor guy. I wish him all the best.
- Rowern 5y agoI won't try to do a TL;DR, but from reading the full article, it seems like he is doing kind of fine right now. He is still sick but he is currently writing a thesis. The article has a really positive vibe to it even though it is a really rare disease.
- civilized 5y agoI would be very impressed to be this functional after battling a brain fungus for four years.
- mdrzn 5y agoBeautifully written, horrifying story. Had no idea this kind of "illness" even existed.
- 3327 5y ago
- xyzal 5y agoIf you're in temptation to image search cerebral fungal infection, don't.
- trenchgun 5y agoI was not, but I am now! Thanks!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 5y agoPart of the brain sticks out into the sinuses. I'm guessing he likely breathed it in.
- ryankrage77 5y agoWell that's terrifying and I wish I could un-read it.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoIt's actually less terrifying to me than the idea that scraping your elbow could have something as awful as a fungal infection crossing the blood brain barrier. Though, to be fair, there are at least one or two places where the brain is not behind the BBB.
- londons_explore 5y agoSo the real question is... If there are only 120 cases of this disease worldwide... Where did it come from originally, and how does it spread from person to person.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoIt's all summed up on wikipedia, per the usual for the curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladophialophora_bantiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladophialophora_bantiana
- Maursault 5y ago> Where did it come from originally, and how does it spread from person to person. > When we started going downhill on the loose gravel, my back wheel slid out from under me and I was thrown from my bike, scraping up my arm and elbow pretty badly.
- beerandt 5y agoIt seems there's debate on whether it can cross the blood brain barrier, with Wikipedia suggesting inhalation as the likely method of acquisition. Which I presume means an upper sinus route directly to the brain, like with brain-eating amoeba.
- sombremesa 5y ago> If there are only 120 cases of this disease worldwide... 120 known cases. Some of the afflicted likely died without ever seeing a doctor, and given the difficult diagnosis, others may have died without the cause ever being known.
- ChrisLomont 5y agoIt doesn't need to spread from person to person. Most likely people get it from rare environment conditions and bad luck.
- londons_explore 5y ago
- londons_explore 5y agoThere are a lot of pathogens that cause long term, sometimes minor or sometimes major ailments - mono, lyme disease, HPV, etc. There may be many many more we don't know about. Could we identify them by blending up a dead persons brain, then DNA sequencing the pulp? Any non-human DNA can then be investigated, and with data from enough people we might start to see patterns, like "this particular non-human genome causes alzheimer's" or "this causes lung cancer".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 5y agoSeems doable (difficult but doable) and a valuable idea if you have the permit from the family. Death changes everything in no time so we would need to use really fresh samples and filter what is expected to be in the body (lots of inner flora that would contaminate everything) from what is new, shouldn't be here and is interesting.
- FerretFred 5y agoUK reader here .. I'm genuinely interested in how the author of this article would afford the medical expenses for this treatment. I know about the insurance, but I'd imagine that this wouldn't cover everything?
- missedthecue 5y agoOnce you hit your out of pocket maximum, insurance covers everything by law. My out of pocket maximum is $5,000 and I don't have a particularly good plan. What that means is that even in the most catastrophic of medical events, I wouldn't pay more than $5k in a year. I could receive $2 million worth of advanced cancer treatments and only pay $5,000.
- BizarroLand 5y agoThe downside is that maximum resets every annual cycle.
- vmception 5y ago> Every now and then, I reach out to someone I find on the internet with my affliction but they never respond. Probably because they're dead. There's no auto-reply for that. It would be interesting if that was possible to affix to personas, optionally. If there was an identity system that could notify forums and emailers and messengers that response isn't possible. Some way to have a resolution.
- jokoon 5y agoI got black mold several times in the places i lived. Never live in a moist home.
- httpsterio 5y agoBlack mold in your home is totally unrelated to the case discussed in the article though.
- jokoon 5y agoSure, but it seems that it's the same fungus. People are much less likely to get black mold in their brain just because they have black mold at home. Still, black mold in homes are dangerous, I think they increases odds of cancer? Maybe it's not the same fungus, I'm not really sure, but if you read the article it seems like it's the common black mold. The precise name is given in the article but I'm a bit lazy to check on wikipedia.
- Hallucinaut 5y agoin the first shared house I lived in, my flat mate (ex-partner of the holder of the lease but in the same dwelling... it was awkward) was acting erratically in the first couple of weeks. It was kind of assumed the break up was getting to him. One night I heard him cursing outside my door (not at me, just generally). The next day he apologized and said things were overwhelming him at times. Within a day or two they admitted him to the hospital our house actually backed onto; I can't quite remember why, I think he may have blacked out at the house while I was at work. They put out the word for his father to fly into the country, but he passed within a day. It was fungal meningitis; something I didn't even know existed, but apparently can be caused by various forms. I don't know if he had a weakened immune system, but it shook me that someone just living in an urban environment in a wealthy country could simply contract this and pass within days.
- sizzle 5y agoWhy can’t they inject the anti-fungal drugs beyond the blood brain barrier manually if it isn’t passing through from the blood? This is terrifying and I genuinely hope they cure this for all of humanity’s sake.
- jmhmd 5y agoThe BBB is a part of capillary walls and so there really isn’t a good way to “manually” inject beyond it. That said, there are current trials ongoing to temporarily disrupt the BBB using high intensity focused ultrasound, allowing injected chemotherapy to cross and help treat brain cancer.
- 8note 5y agoI can imagine that would cause brain damage. It's not like an anti-anything targets one thing and only that
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]