Mysterious Disease Discovered, Strikes Mainly Young Women: "As If Brain Is On Fire", page 1

I just stumbled on this fairly recent article about a mysterious, newly discovered disease that strikes mainly young women. Doctors have described it as if "the brain is on fire".

Health: Mysterious Disease Discovered Locally, Strikes Mainly Young Women

Young women dazed, restrained in hospital beds, acting possessed and then becoming catatonic. They’d been so normal, when suddenly their lives went haywire.

“I had bizarre abnormal movements, would leave my arms out extended, you know, in front of me. I was a relatively normal person, then the next minute I’m hallucinating and insisting that my father had kidnapped me,” said Susannah.

Turns out, Susannah and Emily weren’t mentally ill. They both had an auto immune disease called Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis, when antibodies attack the brain, causing swelling.

Unfortunately, this disease is often misdiagnosed and written off as a psychological disorder when this is a neurological issue. According to the article, however, thousands of people have been diagnosed with this rare disease. To diagnose, researchers have developed a spinal fluid test. Treatment is through immunotherapy, and there is no cure as of this moment.

What do you think about it? Do you think there's a link between nutrition and autoimmune diseases?

reply to post by Jess117

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Lets ask IBM's Watson:
en.wikipedia.org - Watson (computer)...

Watson is an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language,[2] developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's first president, Thomas J. Watson.[3][4] The machine was specifically developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy!. In 2011, Watson competed on Jeopardy against former winners Brad Rutter, and Ken Jennings.[3] [5][6] Watson received the first prize of $1 million.[7]

Watson had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content consuming four terabytes of disk storage[8] including the full text of Wikipedia,[9] but was not connected to the Internet during the game.[10][11] For each clue, Watson's three most probable responses were displayed on the television screen. Watson consistently outperformed its human opponents on the game's signaling device, but had trouble responding to a few categories, notably those having short clues containing only a few words.
........

Here's an article about its appearance on Jeapordy:
techland.time.com - Jeopardy Computer Pits AI Skills Against Humanity...

This kind of AI would be extraordinary at combing through medical data.

Our job should be to store lots of data. Soon AI will be able to make sense of it. Until then we'll have to pay people in the medical profession with the expectation that they'll do it. And to some extent the "cloud" has transferred some of the workload to everyday people. There're many accounts of how people find important information on the internet to solve problems. People are particularly good at doing this. But it requires so much time. This is where computers will be able to help.

Data, data, data. We need to produce lots of it. No matter how much we create, it's trivial compared to what will be available in the future. NEVER forget that things progress fast! And especially with medical issues there needs to be a lot of data to pinpoint the center of "mass".

reply to post by Jess117

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It is still distressingly common for health care professionals to support this intrinsic bias in the field that assumes some sort of psychological source for unusual, or rare pathology in women; particularly young women. It is the go-to answer if they don't have an immediately apparent one, and many things are misdiagnosed as a result. Such a shame. I'm glad they caught this one though.

reply to post by Miraj

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That's a good guess, and I gave you a star for that. I mean, it would make sense to postulate about the effects regarding the production of estrogen/progesterone as hormone imbalances are definitely significant.

reply to post by Jess117

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Don't worry ladies... I'll protect you!


Seriously, that does not sound good at all. I wonder if this is the cause of all these
possession stories we hear about. (I've only heard of stories of young women being possessed now
that I think about it, not to say there isn't male cases, I just can't think of one)

Originally posted by redhorse
reply to post by Jess117

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It is still distressingly common for health care professionals to support this intrinsic bias in the field that assumes some sort of psychological source for unusual, or rare pathology in women; particularly young women. It is the go-to answer if they don't have an immediately apparent one, and many things are misdiagnosed as a result. Such a shame. I'm glad they caught this one though.

I agree misdiagnosis, particularly with women, happens all too commonly. I suppose I'm still thinking about what one of the commentors above said: that this was linked to ovarian tumours.

I mean, taking a look at the historical timeline of the progression in obstetrics in the last fifty years. One of the well-known examples was of the one during the 1950s and '60s: thalidomide, which caused babies to be born with horrible deformities of missing arms and legs. And, more recently, cytotec--which was used to induce labor--caused uterine ruptures and several deaths in babies.

BUT, as you said it's great that they have at least recognized this as a new disease that will ultimately assist in better treatment of these young women. And whoever else it affects as well!

reply to post by Jess117

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Median age of patients was 23 years (range 5–76 years); 91 were women. All patients presented with psychiatric symptoms or memory problems; 76 had seizures, 88 unresponsiveness (decreased conciousness), 86 dyskinesias, 69 autonomic instability, and 66 hypoventilation. 58 (59%) of 98 patients

If it is related to a hormone imbalance, it likely Progesterone that is the cause. Out of 98 Patients studied here. Majority were women, but there apparently must have been 7 males. Since it can also apparently affect males, but at a much much lower rate, it probably is a hormone imbalance of Progesterone.. Since Testosterone is chemically more similar to Progesterone if I remember right.

I figure it has to be related to hormone imbalances since the majority of patients are young women, and probably due to an excess since older women would have much lower amounts of hormones than younger.

The median age was 5-76 in that study. The extreme ends of those patients ages must be the more linked to the ovarian tumors, since that's the only was pre-pubescent girls and post-menopause women would have high amounts of sex hormones in their blood.

Reading further into the study, there was one man with immature tumor on one of his testis. But also a young boy who had no tumor at all. Although in a younger boy, there's definetly the possibility of a hormone imbalance from the onset of puberty.

The highest amount of permanent damage was linked to no tumor at all, in these patients as well.

reply to post by tinhattribunal

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Please do! It would be interesting to see if there's a link with vaccines and the science of it all. Perhaps these young women are more so inclined to develop autoimmune disorders and the effects of the vaccine could possibly serve to be detrimental instead of "beneficial"?

I can see how there can be a perception as I recall reading about a specific type of influenza vaccine in 1976 (or around that time) that increased the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome following the mass inoculations. I'll try to gather some links as well since I'm just recalling from memory at this moment.

reply to post by Raxoxane

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Thank you. I'm glad I could get this discussion going for my first thread on ATS. It's interesting you say that, as I've had three friends alone this week talk about their ovarian cysts. One even had one of her ovaries taken out because of the damage from the particular cyst. It's a little hard to swallow when I hear that it has always been like this. I guess I just never realized how many people have PCOS.

Did the doctor prescribe her birth control? I assume he did since it is common to do so. I am a little weary of them because, like you said, they are reproductive organs after all. Vitamin E and B6 should help with the pain associated with this. It also helps estrogen levels.

Originally posted by Miraj
reply to post by Jess117

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I figure it has to be related to hormone imbalances since the majority of patients are young women, and probably due to an excess since older women would have much lower amounts of hormones than younger.

Reading further into the study, there was one man with immature tumor on one of his testis. But also a young boy who had no tumor at all. Although in a younger boy, there's definetly the possibility of a hormone imbalance from the onset of puberty.

I'm impressed at this information. It looks like your initial thoughts are most likely correct. Thanks for the source, too! I've read through about half of it, and just... wow.

reply to post by manicminxx

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That's an interesting take on things. I mean, birth control is essentially synthetic hormones. I know these are two different instances, but one could simply make the analogy with the effects of pitocin during child labor ("synthetic oxytocin" to induce). This sort of creates a snowball effect of other medicinal interventions such as the epidural to ease the mother's pain, and etc.

It just sort of makes you wonder about these pills and hormonal imbalances.

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