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Article: A Bizarre New Form Of `Fatal Insomnia'
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- May 27, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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The strange and horrifying world of disease-causing agents known
as "prions" has become a little stranger.
In today's New England Journal of Medicine, a team of neurologists
at the University of California at San Francisco reports the case of
a 45-year-old man who died of an apparently new form of a rare
ailment called "fatal insomnia." Unlike all previous victims, he
didn't have the genetic mutation normally associated with the
disease.
His illness, which began with sleeplessness and ended in death 16
months later, arose spontaneously. Ultimately, however, tissue from
his deteriorated brain was found to be capable of transmitting the
fatal insomnia to laboratory animals, even though he had ...