If you have a level of insomnia, you know how it can be damaging to your health as well as your personal life. So you can imagine having a disease that makes you NEVER sleep, keep you in a constant state of exhaustion ... until your body gives and dies.
This is what fatal familial insomnia (FFI) is. The disease is extremely rare (less than one in 10 million), but those who suffer live in extreme agony. Unfortunately there is no cure.
The cause of FFI is a mutated protein called PrPSc, which was found in 40 families worldwide, affecting about 100 people.
Wikipedia
The first signs of the disease are only symptoms of basic insomnia, and panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias.
Flickr / Jacob Stewart
After spend four months, the hallucinations begin. Sometimes victims will act on their dreams, despite not really being asleep. A woman, who was a hairdresser before being diagnosed, people brushed imaginary hair.
Wikipedia
Five months later, the victims are completely unable to sleep and rapid weight loss.
Flickr / Mateus Lunardi Dutra
over the next six months, victims and will develop dementia in an unresponsive state, dream. Eventually, they die of exhaustion. The average lifespan of a patient after the onset of symptoms is 18 months.
Flickr / Stu
(via Oddity Central)
There are currently no cure for IFF, but as people with the disease continue donate their brains to science, experts believe they are close to finding one. Meanwhile, people with the FFI will often bizarre lengths to help them sleep, such as sensory deprivation tanks and even electroshock therapy.
0 Komentar