The symptoms of prion disease are rapidly worsening dementia as well as loss of balance and muscle twitching.
Prion disease is a rare, fatal brain disorder that causes severe neurological changes as misfolded proteins damage your brain tissue.
Prion disease leads to cognitive and mental changes, movement and physical control symptoms and even vision and specialized symptoms.
The vision and specialized symptoms of prion disease include, vision loos, blurry sight, strange visual disturbances and even rare total blindness.
And even severe insomnia, with the total inability to sleep, which is notable in fatal familial insomnia.
Movement and physical control symptoms of prion disease include:
Ataxia, where you have poor balance and awkward, uncoordinated walking.
Myoclonus, where you have sudden, brief and involuntary muscle jerks or twitching.
Stiffness, in which you have muscle rigidity and slow body movements.
And speech issues, including trouble talking or trouble swallowing as the prion disease gets worse.
And the cognitive and mental changes of prion disease include:
Hallucinations, where you see or hear things that are not there.
Confusion, including disorientation and trouble processing information.
Personality shifts, including sudden agitation, depression, anxiety or even apathy.
And rapid dementia, which includes quick loss of memory, thinking skills and judgement.
Prion diseases spread when misshapen proteins force normal proteins in the body to fold the wrong way, which happens through three main ways: sporadic generation, genetic inheritance, and exposure to infected tissue or medical equipment.
How Misfolded Proteins Spread Inside the Body.
The chain reaction: A single bad protein touches a healthy protein and changes its shape into a prion.
Cell travel: Immune cells like dendritic cells pick up these bad proteins and carry them to lymph nodes and the nervous system.
Brain damage: Over months or years, the prions reach the brain, kill cells, and leave tiny holes that make the brain look like a sponge.
The Three Main Causes of Infection.
Sporadic cases: Most cases happen for no known reason when a normal protein suddenly changes shape on its own.
Inherited cases: People can inherit a changed gene from a parent that makes these bad protein shapes much more likely.
Acquired cases: People or animals can catch the prion disease by eating infected meat, receiving tissue or organ transplants, or using dirty surgical tools.