Mystery brain disease patients in New Brunswick say they welcome investigation
23 comments
·February 6, 2025zug_zug
I won’t presume to suggest a cause, but it’s worth acknowledging how terrifying it is that any of a number of compounds in a relatively small dose could cause wild effects on the human mind or body.
stevenwoo
ICYMI there has been a ongoing 20+ year epidemic of kidney disease in Central American manual laborers, no one has pinned down an exact cause yet but it definitely seems to be heat exposure related. Not quite as scary as something that resembles CJD but lots of researchers looking into for a long time without finding definitive cause.
https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2019/central-american-k...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/26/7538343...
Paul-Craft
There have been sufferers ranging from age 18-85, and it affects both men and women in approximately equal numbers. Both of those things are highly suggestive of some kind of environmental cause. If this were an episode of House, a lot of peoples' homes would be getting broken into right about now.
Anotheroneagain
The opposite should be investigated as well. The deficiencies in nutrients like copper, selenium or molybdenum are generally only known in animals, and rarely investigated among people. Copper deficiency can cause various symptoms like weight loss, loss of pigment, indigestion, or neurological problems. It seems that molybdenum deficiency shifts the symptoms towards neurological, while the rest happens from copper deficiency alone.
canadiantim
Doctors in New Brunswick have generally been pointing to the use of certain pesticides/herbicides as likely culprit so far
neom
Been following this on and off and it's pretty strange generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brunswick_neurological_syn... && https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/magazine/canada-brain-dis...
userbinator
From your first link:
symptoms such as "rapidly progressing dementia", unusual weight loss, "tightening of the muscles", uncoordinated gait, and muscle atrophy
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organophosphate-induced_delaye...
inverted_flag
> The CJDSS ruled out any prion disorder, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)
Thank god.
devmor
That was my knee-jerk scenario to think of too - especially given the rising prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease in the US states near that part of Canada.
It's notable that the CJDSS director said they ruled out "known forms of prion disease" specifically, and the neuropathologist Jansen stated "no evidence for a prion disease was found" - I think the sentence you're quoting is actually misleading because it seems to suggest that there is negative evidence for a prion disorder, which there is not.
UniverseHacker
Seems like an unidentified virus could be the cause?
awakeasleep
What sort of industrial chemical manufacturing plants are in the area?
TriangleEdge
Irving is a local logging company that uses chemicals to kill a specific type of wood (hard wood if I remember correctly). The Irvings basically own NB afaik. There were also some protests about fracking maybe 10 years back because of the chemicals used.
conradev
Fascinating: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6184083
neom
The chem hypothesis is down these lines: https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/investigate-glyphosate-co... and https://nbmediacoop.org/2024/10/10/could-a-neurotoxin-resear... - Some people think it's related to seafood, they eat a lot of lobster in NB, way more than the rest of Canada, but it doesn't seem to be an issue with the other areas out there and they eat a lot of lobster also.
chefandy
Maybe post-catch or something— like a cleaning chemical used in fish markets or something— but one branch of my family are lobstermen in nearby waters south of the border and I haven’t heard of any such thing happening in their communities.
xer0x
I am still stunned how eager they were to ignore this problem.
bbarnett
Some areas have a strong familial tree. Even with new blood over 100+ years, some genes may be dominant.
I wonder if it's that, plus the environmental factor. A mutated gene, dominant, always passed on, making the population susceptible.
UniverseHacker
That is not how a dominant trait in genetics works- it means you only need one copy to express the phenotype, but it is no more likely to be passed on than any other genetic trait.
It is possible to have a trait that occurs with high frequency in a population- so that almost everyone has 2 copies of it.
OutOfHere
This has got to be either a prion (from animal and/or soil) or a natural chemical neurotoxin (from seafood or other food).
This has been going on for a long while, so I associate it with an ongoing coverup of the facts that are too dangerous to disclose.
Context: Moncton is built on a swamp. It has _a lot_ of mosquitoes during summer and 3 to 5 ft of snow during winter. It had (has?) the lowest home prices in all of Canada because of this. NB also has the lowest income per family (or next to lowest, Nunavut might be lower).
MS is more common in northern climates as well, but afaik it's not higher than average in NB.
Source: I have spent quite a bit of time in Moncton.