Montreal, June 12, 2021: Forty-eight people from the same small Canadian province struck with a baffling mix of symptoms including insomnia, impaired motor function and hallucinations such as visions of the dead. Conspiracy theories blamed the illness on cellphone towers and Covid shots. These are some plots of a mystery that has stumped the medical establishment, attracted the attention of top neurologists and scared residents of New Brunswick, a province of 770,000. In the past six years, dozens have fallen ill from the disease, and six people have died.
The medical enigma was initially slow to gain national attention. Canadian health authorities, distracted by Covid, scrambled to determine the seriousness of the outbreak, which was only exposed after a memo about it by New Brunswick’s chief medical officer was leaked to the press in March.
The disease was first observed in 2015 when Dr Alier Marrero, saw a patient who presented a mix of symptoms including depression, rapidly progressive dementia and muscle pains. The number of patients started increasing and ranged in age from 18 to 84 according to the reports published in timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
With no diagnosis, he gave the disease a prosaic working name: Neurological Syndrome of Unknown Etiology in New Brunswick. He also notified colleagues and health authorities. Dr Neil Cashman, a neurologist, said the illness was a whodunit of the type seen only a few times a century. But other medical experts questioned the condition’s novelty. Dr Michael Geschwind cautioned that what can seem like a new illness sometimes turns out to be a known disease that has not been diagnosed.
