Dozens in a Canadian province face a mysterious brain disorder: ‘The population is in shock’
Updated 3:53 PM;
Today 11:30 AM
Toxic cyanobacteria from a harmful algal bloom (HAB) turn western Lake Erie water green at the Maumee Bay State Park beach in Oregon, Ohio on Aug. 7, 2019. Researchers in Canada theorize that a toxin produced by cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae blooms, could be the cause of a mysterious brain disease that is afflicting patients in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. (Photo: Garret Ellison)
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Imagine what it would be like to realize there’s a sickness out there that no one knows anything about not what it is, where it’s coming from, nor what to do to protect oneself from it yet, a cluster of people in your area are suffering immensely and dying from it, and the numbers are growing.
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Those afflicted with the condition - called the New Brunswick Cluster of Neurological Syndrome of Unknown Cause, for now - have ranged in age from 18 to 85 (file photo).
Alier Marrero is stumped. For years, the neurologist in Moncton, New Brunswick, has seen patients with symptoms common to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain disorder that affects one in 1 million people each year. But diagnostic testing for the rare neurodegenerative syndrome keeps coming back negative, more patients with similar symptoms have turned up each year, and Marrero hasn t found another cause. Federal public health officials last year identified the cases as a cluster meriting further investigation.
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Mysterious, devastating brain disorder afflicts dozens in New Brunswick
Across the border in Maine, officials say their disease surveillance and epidemiology teams learned about the cluster in March, but no cases have been reported there.
By Amanda ColettaThe Washington Post
Alier Marrero is stumped.
For years, the neurologist in Moncton, New Brunswick, has seen patients with symptoms common to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain disorder that affects one in 1 million people each year.
But diagnostic testing for the rare neurodegenerative syndrome keeps coming back negative, more patients with similar symptoms have turned up each year, and Marrero hasn’t found another cause. Federal public health officials last year identified the cases as a cluster meriting further investigation.
A mysterious, devastating brain disorder is afflicting dozens in one Canadian province Amanda Coletta Alier Marrero is stumped. For years, the neurologist in Moncton, New Brunswick, has seen patients with symptoms common to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain disorder that affects 1 in 1 million people each year. But diagnostic testing for the rare neurodegenerative syndrome keeps coming back negative, more patients with similar symptoms have turned up each year, and Marrero hasn’t found another cause. Federal public health officials last year identified the cases as a cluster meriting further investigation. Now Marrero and scientists and doctors from Canada and around the world are playing detective in a medical whodunit, racing to untangle the cause of the brain disorder that has afflicted 48 people, six of whom have died, in the Moncton area and New Brunswick’s Acadian peninsula.