Check out the FAQ,Terms of Service & Disclaimers by clicking the
link. Please register
to be able to post. By viewing this site you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Acknowledge our Disclaimers.
FluTrackers.com Inc. does not provide medical advice. Information on this web site is collected from various internet resources, and the FluTrackers board of directors makes no warranty to the safety, efficacy, correctness or completeness of the information posted on this site by any author or poster.
The information collated here is for instructional and/or discussion purposes only and is NOT intended to diagnose or treat any disease, illness, or other medical condition. Every individual reader or poster should seek advice from their personal physician/healthcare practitioner before considering or using any interventions that are discussed on this website.
By continuing to access this website you agree to consult your personal physican before using any interventions posted on this website, and you agree to hold harmless FluTrackers.com Inc., the board of directors, the members, and all authors and posters for any effects from use of any medication, supplement, vitamin or other substance, device, intervention, etc. mentioned in posts on this website, or other internet venues referenced in posts on this website.
We are not asking for any donations. Do not donate to any entity who says they are raising funds for us.
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Canada - New Brunswick monitoring more than 48 cases (10 fatal) of unknown neurological disease - 2015+ - officials say illnesses are due to unrelated known causes
And the mystery has prompted a fierce row between officials who suggest the cases are unrelated, and scientists who have argued that they may all have been triggered by environmental factors or contaminants.
A whistleblower in the Canadian province of New Brunswick has warned that a progressive neurological illness that has baffled experts for more than two years appears to be affecting a growing number of young people and causing swift cognitive decline among some of the afflicted.
Speaking to the Guardian, an employee with Vitalité Health Network, one of the province’s two health authorities, said that suspected cases are growing in number and that young adults with no prior health triggers are developing a catalog of troubling symptoms, including rapid weight loss, insomnia, hallucinations, difficulty thinking and limited mobility.
The official number of cases under investigation, 48, remains unchanged since it was first announced in early spring 2021. But multiple sources say the cluster could now be as many as 150 people, with a backlog of cases involving young people still requiring further assessment.
Illness in a caretaker for a patient (including in an HCW below????) might suggest contagion, not an environmental trigger. But death counts are exactly where they were a few months ago. Case counts are in dispute, but it's not clear whether additional cases are occurring or whether unrelated illnesses are being lumped together.
Several new cases in New Brunswick involve caretakers of those afflicted, suggesting a possible environmental trigger
(snip)
At the same time, at least nine cases have been recorded in which two people in close contact – but without genetic links – have developed symptoms, suggesting that environmental factors may be involved.
One suspected case involved a man who was developing symptoms of dementia and ataxia. His wife, who was his caregiver, suddenly began losing sleep and experiencing muscle wasting, dementia and hallucinations. Now her condition is worse than his.
A woman in her 30s was described as non-verbal, is feeding with a tube and drools excessively. Her caregiver, a nursing student in her 20s, also recently started showing symptoms of neurological decline.
In another case, a young mother quickly lost nearly 60 pounds, developed insomnia and began hallucinating. Brain imaging showed advanced signs of atrophy.
------------
(This story continues getting odder. If this was an environmental exposure, I would expect larger clusters than just two cases. Entire families eat the same food. Could this be some kind of vector-borne pathogen causing encephalitis? Prion disease seems to be ruled out by autopsy, and this isn't the kind of clustering you would expect by contagion from contact. I find it at least a little odd that the only prospective diagnosis that seems to be under consideration is BMAA exposure.
Also, keep in mind the large number of contacts Ms. Cormier has had in multiple provinces, as well as the large number of cases Dr. Marrero has had contact with, neither one causing any apparent "transmission". - alert)
In a recent report byCBC’s Fifth Estate, several people within the cluster region who felt they were experiencing symptoms found it impossible to see a specialist because of long wait times. They also felt that practitioners dismissed their concerns.
The government, on the other hand, after continuously botching their COVID response, including over the Christmas holiday, has unsurprisingly offered no strategy to tackle this mystery illness.
Instead of calling for all hands on deck to investigate this mystery illness, the Premier is preventing scientists from doing their job, fighting healthcare workers who deserve fair wages, and forcing hospital closures.
There was one case of metastatic carcinoma, one case of FTLD-TDP43, one case of neocortical Lewy body pathology, one case of neocortical Lewy body pathology and AD, 2 cases of AD with vascular pathology, one case of mainly vascular pathology, and one case without significant pathology (consistent with patient’s previous history). In these 8 patients no evidence for a prion disease was found, nor novel pathology. We suggest that these 8 patients represent a group of misclassified clinical diagnoses.
------
(One additional thought...if there are currently nine suspected clusters, and about two months ago there was a report of 12 suspected clusters, does that mean that additional suspected cases have been excluded? If so, what were they diagnosed with? - alert)
There's no way of explaining this, even as a novel prion or novel virus. If this were a truly contagious illness, even with a long incubation period, you'd have a lot more than 9 deaths after three years and the autopsies would clearly pick up the method of damage, even fi they can't detect the agent. This isn't consistent with the autopsies or anything else reported in this thread. Commenters on some of the recent articles have suggested that a mass psychogenic illness episode may be occurring on top of whatever is causing the undiagnosed illnesses, complicating the attempts to solve this outbreak.
What has been reported in the last two days here is basically a doomsday zombie apocalypse outbreak and might also be a sign of people panicking at the inability to solve the actual illness. This outbreak needs a serious investigation, possibly by international experts, of some of the more probable cases, such as Mr. Ellis and Ms. Cormier, and not leaks of a zombie apocalypse to the foreign media.
If the above post was the first post in a new outbreak, it would be by far the most alarming post in FT history. But it's not.
New report out today with several case histories, including three young people who haven't been previously mentioned (although one of them has a history of football concussions and another has been provisionally re-diagnosed as PTSD):
Young patients with mystery neurological illness in New Brunswick anxious for answers
20 per cent of cluster of cases are under the age of 40, CBC News has learned
Maeve McFadden · CBC News · Posted: Jan 05, 2022 6:00 AM AT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago
Terriline Porelle was at work during the summer of 2020 when she had a sharp pain in her leg. She assumed it was a pinched nerve.
She had no idea it was the first indication she might be suffering from a mysterious, fatal neurological illness.
Things got worse, though. Once an enthusiastic outdoor adventure-seeker, Porelle now bumps into walls and doors making her way around her house in the southeastern New Brunswick community of Cocagne.
It has been a long road for the 33-year-old since that first shot of pain. A road that eventually led to a cluster of 48 patients with a neurological syndrome of unknown cause in New Brunswick.
Porelle's symptoms have dimmed a bright young lifestyle — something true for other young people facing the same diagnosis...
Tweet
Comment