What happens when a person loses the ability to sleep

There are worse things than smerti

Stress, deadlines or caffeine can give us a few sleepless nights, but there are people for whom insomnia is chronic, complete and fatal. Below we discuss a rare but terrible disorder known as "fatal familial insomnia." The first case of fatal familial insomnia shocked the world in 1984, when the fifty-year Italian named Silvano, not having any problems before sleeping, registered in the famous study of sleep clinic. He completely lost the ability to sleep.

For most of us, the term "insomnia" means that we have a few hours can not sleep. And people suffering from sleep disorders above are not able to sleep at all, and it lasts for months. The man, whose arrival at the clinic in Bologna has done so much noise, died after four months officially documented insomnia. Both then and now doctors can not determine the exact cause of his illness.

Family Silvano, and about forty other families around the world, have a certain genetic mutation. Almost all members of the affected families reported that they sometimes do not sleep the whole night, but the disease begins to develop only in individual cases. Then it becomes chronic, and it becomes life-threatening. The official diagnosis 1984 was preceded by a flood of unofficial deaths. In the 70's niece Silvano suddenly began to lose the ability to sleep, and died a year after the onset of the disease. Sleeping pills and other medicines have not helped her. Shortly after her death from her sister was found the same set of symptoms. This woman's husband was a doctor. He was very frightened and decided to look at old family records. There he found a lot of messages about family members who died from "epilepsy" and from "mental illness", the symptoms of their illness seemed to conform to the same pattern. There was a lot of distant relatives who have seen their family members die from insomnia.

Genetic testing showed that half of the members of the family Silvano - carriers of the mutant gene. Most of them remained healthy life. And those who have lost the ability to sleep, waiting for a terrible future. Because of insomnia, the body produces a special protein that begins to destroy the structure of the brain. When the doctors examined the brain Silvano, there found many tiny holes. When insomnia lasts for a very long time, the patient gets stuck on the fine line between dream and reality, it loses the ability to perceive reality and eventually dies.

via factroom.ru