China News Service, June 6th. According to the New York Times reported on the 4th, 48 patients from the same province in Canada had puzzling symptoms, including insomnia, impaired motor function and hallucinations.

This seems to be a newly emerging disease that plagues Canadian medical institutions and has attracted the attention of some of the world's top neurologists.

　　The population of New Brunswick in Canada is approximately 770,000.

In the past six years, dozens of people have contracted this disease and 6 people have died.

Data map: Toronto, Canada.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Yu Ruidong

　　The disease was first discovered in 2015, when Ariel Marrero, a neuroscientist in New Brunswick, discovered that a patient had strange mixed symptoms, including anxiety, depression, rapidly deteriorating dementia, and muscles. Pain and terrible visual disturbance.

　　However, information about the disease was not publicly disclosed until a memo from the chief medical officer of New Brunswick was leaked to the media in March 2021.

　　According to reports, the patients ranged in age from 18 to 84. They mainly lived in two areas of New Brunswick: Moncton and Arcadia.

Marrero said that the test showed abnormalities such as brain atrophy and neurological dysfunction in the patient, but none of the results can be linked to each other to form a clear diagnosis.

　　He searched for medical information and consulted with colleagues around the world.

In the end, he said, only one conclusion is reasonable: "This is something we haven't seen before (disease)."

　　In April 2021, six years after the first case, the health authorities in New Brunswick and the Canadian capital Ottawa formed a team of neurologists, epidemiologists, environmentalists, and veterinarians to investigate .

　　Medical investigators said that the underlying cause has been screened to four or five.

　　Dr. Cashman, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, said that one of the research directions is that this disease may be caused by a toxin produced by a blue-green algae and is related to diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

　　He said that another potential cause of the disease may be the patient's long-term exposure to domoic acid.

This is a neurotoxin found in shellfish off the coast of New Brunswick.

　　Gabriel Cormil, 20, is one of the youngest patients with this disease.

When she started going to university two years ago, she suddenly experienced fatigue and other symptoms inexplicably.

She was forced to drop out of school because she could not read easily and could not walk to class.

　　Not knowing where the problem occurred has amplified people's fear of this disease.

Cormier said that after being misdiagnosed as mononucleosis, the doctor in the emergency room told her that she had no problems.

As her health deteriorated, with involuntary convulsions, memory decline, and hallucinations, her case was eventually transferred to a neurologist.

　　Today, she lives in rural northern New Brunswick and walks on crutches.

"I just started the best chapter of my life, and then it disappeared," she said.

"I don't know if I will die or if I will live with these symptoms for the rest of my life."

　　In addition, other medical experts questioned the novelty of the disease.

Gerschwind, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, is one of the world’s top experts in the study of rare neurological diseases. He has not studied cases or autopsies of patients with this disease.

But he warned that sometimes, the illness looks like a new disease, but the result is just a known disease that has not yet been diagnosed.