weird diseases

Man, there are some weird freaky diseases out there. I was reading an article at CNN about mad cow disease, so I googled for the name of the disease out of curiosity. On the webpage I found (I think it was from NIH or something), it said that this disease is one of a number of diseases all related to a particular protein. One of those is "fatal familial insomnia." Intruiged by the name, I looked it up.

Essentially, fatal familial insomnia (FFI) is a genetic disease (though it can also occur totally randomly). The following passage (from http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jcthomas/JCTHOMAS/1997%20Case%20Studies/AAkroush.html ) has a description of the symptoms:

There are four stages of the disease before an individual's life ends. The first stage is progressive insomnia, the trade mark of fatal familial insomnia. The first stage develops over approximately four months and includes a collection of psychiatric problems such as panic attacks and bizarre phobias. The second stage includes hallucinations, panic, agitation and sweating and lasts about five months. The third stage lasts about three months and is total insomnia with weight loss. The individual at this point looks much older and may experience incontinence. The fourth stage is around six months long and is recognized as dementia, total insomnia and sudden death after becoming mute.

Damn, that's freaky.