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A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

bbc.com

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Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#81

Post by elric »

ajb wrote: post #63
throwaway_9879 wrote: post #29

The answer is "nothing" The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients. Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conve…

This guy is probably chasing moonshine, but TBH "functional neurological disorder" sounds like one of those face-saving labels that doctors use when they don't have any idea what's going on.

It's a diagnosis that's made only after excluding a wide range of other potential causes for the symptoms (like brain damage, structural abnormalities, strokes, seizures, MS, infections, ...).

It's not just a case of "we don't know", it's a case of "we've looked at everything under the sun and nothing fits".

Sounds like one of those things that needs more research.

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#82

Post by hedayet »

whatsupdog wrote: post #43
hedayet wrote: post #33

I was diagnosed with a mysterious tachycardia last year, coincidental to this headline: while I was living in Canada. At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast. I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period e…

How many COVID shots did you get? I noticed my resting heart rate go up after the first one. So I never got another one.

I got two. But these events started to happen 4 years after my last shot.

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#84

Post by oezi »

matsemann wrote: post #60

Some questions I'm stuck with: * are all the patients really sick or as sick as the symptoms he documents, or is it some kind of Munchausen induced or lied about by the doctor? * Or are they all sick, they're just not getting the help they need because he wants to have a mystery disease? * If they're all sick, is it then a higher prevalence than expected, so even if there is no mystery disease there is still somethin…

The prevalence question isn't really answered in the article. If it is 500 cases in an area in which 1m people live then it might not really be a cluster. But if it is 500 cases out of a town of 40000 then it is quite something different.

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#85

Post by ljf »

tptacek wrote: post #40
alephnerd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but almost the entire cluster of the NB cases are around Caraquet NB, which is completely surrounded by softwood plantations, and this has been a case they have been fighting for years . Additionally, Industrial scale lumber harvesting uses magnitudes more Glyphosate than a home gardener or your local HOA.

I don't doubt something specific is going on there, but it's unlikely it's Roundup, since every suburb in North America is carpet-bombed with the stuff.

While other areas might receive high doses, I'd wonder if there is a link here to the amount of salmon and deer the people there eat, that itself consumed exposed plants or lived in exposed water, compared to the rest of the country? Or the impacts on aquifers?

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#86

Post by vasco »

throwaway_9879 wrote: post #29

The answer is "nothing" The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients. Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conve…

> The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero

They all live in the same province too. If you're already wrong here it's hard to trust anything else

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#87

Post by gucci-on-fleek »

pash wrote: post #46

I’m not qualified to comment intelligently on what might be going on here, but I’d like to add some background color that the article lacks. Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease is a prion disease [0] for which there is no definitive diagnosis in vivo. A confident diagnosis can be made only after examining brain tissue under a microscope. Prions are an unusual type of mis-folded protein that induce other proteins to take on a s…

> but rarely nervous tissue of cattle infected with BSE, which is present in Canada more than anywhere else (by a small margin).

I don't think that that's quite right. Over the past 15 years, only 3 cases have been reported in Canadian cattle [0], while Canada has over 12 million cattle at any given moment [1]. This organization claims that Taiwan, Greece, Ecuador, and Russia are all higher-risk [2].

You could certainly argue that cases in animals could be under-reported, but human cases are much harder to hide, and only a total of 2 cases have ever been reported [3]. Canadians eat a lot of beef, so this suggests that the reported numbers for cattle are probably accurate, otherwise the human numbers would be much larger.

However, a different neurological condition (Multiple sclerosis) is more common in Canada than anywhere else in the world [4], which might have some connection with the disease discussed in the article (but this is just a wild guess).

[0]: https://inspection.canada.ca/en/animal-health/terrestrial-an...

[1]: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=321001...

[2]: https://www.woah.org/en/disease/bovine-spongiform-encephalop...

[3]: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/diseases/cjd/dashboard.htm...

[4]: https://globalnews.ca/news/4191203/multiple-sclerosis-canada...

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#88

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

culi wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundup is IPA, Touchdown is DAM. Both extremely common.

Yeah both glyphosate. But the doctor in the OP explicitly pointed out that they had increased levels of glyphosate in their blood: > He also warned that some patients' blood work showed elevated levels for compounds found in herbicides such as glyphosate, and said more testing should be done to rule out environmental toxins, including the neurotoxin BMAA, which is produced by blue-green algae. https://www.cbc.ca/news…

They would need to have been ingesting or breathing the glyphosate pretty recent to their blood draw. It doesn't absorb easily into skin, and it passes through you quickly. And if you do get a concentrated dose, you get nausea, vomiting, respiratory issues (if inhaled). It's a weird thing to be the culprit, since it's hard to get, and doesn't cause many issues. And it's weird to mention at all, since he says only "a few people" had elevated levels of it.

"Melissa Nicholson said her 59-year-old mother, who has suffered for four years with a neurological disorder, received test results indicating she had levels of glyphosate in her body that were 47 times higher than the acceptable level."

This is bizarre. Either she lives right next to a farm that's spraying it, and she's getting it blown into an open window in her house where she's breathing it, and then immediately went for a blood test... or she's somehow ingesting it in/around her house (like from a bottle of Roundup that keeps getting splashed on something she's ingesting).

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#89

Post by vasco »

matwood wrote: post #61
silisili wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, same! The first time I noticed it, coupled with palpitations, I thought I was dying and went to the ER. I swear nobody teaches you how to get older, so everything feels like something is going way wrong. They treated me like a baby, said avoid caffeine, and maybe see a cardio. And I did. He was an old guy, didn't seem at all worried. He said he worked in pro sports and a surprising number of people have it, inclu…

Did you get an EKG? Do you have it documented somewhere this issue randomly occurring is your 'normal', that's easy to share if you have an actual cardiac event? The reason I ask is I have a sternum pectus, so my EKGs can be odd. My cardio said I'm fine, but I should keep my odd EKG on my phone to show any doctors if I have an actual cardio event. Otherwise they may end up chasing something that isn't the issue.

Finally a useful application of a tattoo

Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease

#90

Post by CheeseFromLidl »

enceladus06 wrote: post #50
throwaway_9879 wrote: post #29

The answer is "nothing" The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients. Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conve…

Right, but what is causing the functional neurological disorder? Speaking as someone who has had alot of of chronic pain [CPPS] there is some sort of neuro issue going on but we don't know what it is. But "dementia, weight loss, unsteadiness, jerking movements and facial twitches" does seem like more than just neuro?

  dementia, weight loss, unsteadiness, jerking movements and facial twitches
This actually describes my benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms. The only thing missing is the suicide-inducing tinnitus.
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