Via The Globe and Mail: In New Brunswick, experts try to figure out why dozens have been affected by a mystery brain disease. Excerpt:
It typically starts with uncharacteristic irritability, anxiety and depression. Then comes pain, along with insomnia, and a constellation of other devastating symptoms, including terrifying hallucinations, a loss of balance and co-ordination, and in a few cases, Capgras delusion – the irrational belief that family members or other familiar people have been replaced by imposters.
By now, Dr. Alier Marrero knows what a mysterious brain illness that has sickened dozens of New Brunswickers looks like.
But what he can’t tell you is how to best help these patients – or how to prevent others from suffering the same fate. Because before Dr. Marrero can tackle these questions, he must find the answer to another, more basic one: What has made all these people in his province ill in the first place?
Without knowing the cause, “it’s very difficult to go out there and shoot in the dark,” said Dr. Marrero, a neurologist at Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton, explaining the best he and his team can do for the patients is to treat their symptoms. “But still, the puzzle is not solved.”
Dr. Marrero is leading an investigation into this unknown brain disease that has affected residents mostly in the Moncton area and the Acadian Peninsula, and has attracted the attention of scientists around the world. As of Friday, there have been 47 cases, including six patients who have died, and more possible cases are being investigated.
Working in the shadow of a global pandemic, he and his colleagues are looking for clues in a hunt that leads down multiple potential paths. One line of pursuit suggests what they’re seeing may be akin to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease. Another hints at a possible environmental toxin, similar to a 1987 outbreak that sickened more than 100 Canadians who ate contaminated Atlantic shellfish. And yet another suggests answers may be found by revisiting a mysterious neurological disease that was detected in the Pacific island of Guam in the 1940s.
“In many ways, it’s the worst thing that could happen, to have this happen in the middle of COVID-19, because what you need are boots on the ground,” said Michael Strong, professor of neurology at Western University and president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Dr. Strong, an expert in neurodegenerative diseases, explained investigating potential environmental toxins would require going into communities and individual households to look for commonalities between cases, including examining things such as water supply, fishing and hunting habits. It also requires taking soil and water samples, and studying them back in the lab.
“If the worse-case scenario is that this is something new that we haven’t seen before, then truly bringing the whole of the government response that’s working on this now and bringing the academic community to bear on this ... it’s what we’ve got to do,” he said.
Since the first case in 2015, the illness has shown up in more individuals over the past three years, ranging in age from 18 to 86. And researchers say they are a long way from solving the mystery.
