Canadian authorities are investigating the causes of a mysterious brain disease that has infected more than 40 people in the province of New Brunswick.
The symptoms of this disease are similar to those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is a rare and fatal brain disorder in which symptoms include vision loss, hallucinations to muscle atrophy.
The Guardian reported, early March 2021, Canadian authorities notified health workers in the New Brunswick area that they were monitoring 43 cases of neurological disease with unknown causes.
The first cases came from 2015. However, in recent years there has been an increase in cases of mysterious brain disease, with 24 cases reported in 2020 and six cases in 2021. Of the 43 cases, 5 of them were declared dead.
Previously, doctors suspected that this disease was related to CJD caused by abnormal proteins called prions. However, further investigations indicated that the brain disease was not associated with CJD or any other protein disease.
"There is no evidence or evidence that this disease is associated with prion disease," said Dr. Neil Cashman, a professor at the University of British Columbia who studies prion disease and is involved in the current research, told CBC News. "Frankly, this surprised me."
Currently, researchers are investigating the cause of a mysterious brain disease which may be a new disease. People with this disease are known to experience conditions that get worse each month, ranging from unexplained pain, seizures, to cognitive decline and muscle disorders (muscle shrinkage).
Most of the cases have been identified in Semananjung Acadian in northeastern New Brunswick near Moncton, a city in southeastern New Brunswick.