New Brunswick will conduct an investigation into a neurodegenerative illness impacting dozens of individuals for which no cause has been determined, Premier Susan Holt says. The mystery illness has so far been seen in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
The illness was first reported to the New Brunswick provincial health authority in 2020, according to a New Brunswick government website. Approximately 48 cases have been reported to the Canadian Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System (CJDSS), an arm of the Public Health Agency of Canada that does national surveillance for human prion disease. Prion diseases are rare, fatal, degenerative brain disorders.
The illness became part of a Public Health New Brunswick (PHNB) investigation in 2021. PHNB determined that the patients were not suffering from a new illness, but rather their symptoms fit other diagnoses, such as Alzheimer’s disease, mixed dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer, among others….