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Officials in Canada are rushing to find the cause of a mysterious brain disease that has afflicted more than 40 people in the province of New Brunswick, according to reports.
Symptoms of the mysterious disease resemble those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and fatal brain disease; and include memory loss, hallucinations and muscle atrophy, according to The Guardian.
Earlier this month, Canadian officials alerted doctors in the New Brunswick area that they were monitoring a cluster of 43 cases of neurological disease of unknown cause, The Guardian reported. The first identified case dates back to 2015, but officials have noted an increasing number of cases in recent years, with 24 cases reported in 2020 and six so far in 2021, according to CBC News. Five deaths have been linked to the disease.
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Doctors first suspected the cases were CJD, which is caused by abnormally folded proteins called prions. But tests so far have shown no signs of CJD, or any other associated prion disease.
“There is no evidence, not a clue – even in the three autopsies that were performed – of human prion disease,” Dr. Neil Cashman, a professor at the University of British Columbia who studies the prion diseases and is participating in the new investigation, told CBC News. “It surprised me, frankly.”
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Several research teams are currently studying the cause, which could be a whole new disease or several different disorders already known. “It was a call to arms to identify the cause,” Cashman said.
Patients with the disease developed progressively worse symptoms over 18 to 36 months, ranging from unexplained pain and spasms to cognitive decline, muscle atrophy and chattering teeth, The Guardian reported.
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Most of the cases so far have been identified in the Acadian Peninsula, northeastern New Brunswick and near Moncton, a city in southeastern New Brunswick, according to CBC News.
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Since the cases appear to be limited to a certain region, it is possible that these cases were due to an environmental toxin, CBC News reported.
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Some possible suspects include B-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) and domoic acid – two toxins that sometimes build up in fish and shellfish, Cashman said. However, he stressed that this was only speculation so far and finding the real cause could take time.
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“It is possible that ongoing investigations will give us the cause in a week, or it is possible that it will give us the cause in a year,” he said.
This article originally appeared on LiveScience.
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