Via The Star in Toronto: Could mysterious nodding disease in Africa have global implications? Excerpt:
Researchers had hypothesized it might be caused by a new viral encephalitis, but that didn’t bear any fruit. They also thought perhaps it was a prion disease — such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease — but they have ruled that out, as well.
Now scientists are betting on the possibility that nodding syndrome is associated with river blindness. In all three CDC investigations so far, said Dowell, researchers have found an association.
Children and adolescents with the disease are more likely to have antibodies against river blindness and were more likely to be exposed to it. But scientists don’t know how river blindness transforms itself into nodding syndrome. None of the children or adolescents who suffer from nodding syndrome recover.
“Once they have it, it is forever,” said Dowell. It is very debilitating — they can’t eat, they are malnourished and they have cognitive problems, so they drop out of school and become totally dependent on their parents and the community, Dowell said.
Currently, sufferers are being treated with anti-epileptic medications and family members report the children are experiencing some relief.
The CDC has also recommended that they be treated for river blindness and malnutrition.
Global Significance
“Because we don’t know what causes it or its transmission routes, we don’t know what implications it may have for the rest of the world,” said Dowell.
Some diseases in Africa are local and others turn out to be globally important. He cites as an example “slim disease” — a wasting disease in West Africa. “It turned out to have been caused by HIV before HIV was discovered.”
In the case of nodding syndrome “we don’t know the implications of this for the rest of the world,” Dowell said. “It’s quite clear it has huge implications for those living in Kitgum district in Uganda, but it could turn out to have just as huge implications for the rest of the world.”
