Nodding Disease Origins Remain Unexplained
By Katherine Harmon
A strange illness has been killing thousands of young people each year, and recently it has started claiming even more victims in Africa.
Called nodding disease, it usually strikes children at the age of 4 or 5 years and starts with occasional bouts of uncontrolled nodding. As the disease progresses through adolescence, the nodding often buds into full-blown epileptic seizures, and victims lose developmental ground, often becoming unable to care for themselves, communicate or even avoid simple accidental death by drowning or burning.
Since it was first described in 1962 in Tanzania, the frequently fatal disease has been blamed, variously, on viruses, pesticides, fungi, vitamin deficiency, monkey meat and parasites. A new special report, published online April 12 in Science, details the more recent outbreaks of the condition in South Sudan and northern Uganda and helps to refine the list of possible causes.
“We have a long list of things that are not causing nodding disease,” Scott Dowell, director of the division of global disease detection and emergency response at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters earlier this year.
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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/04/12/nodding-disease-origins-remain-unexplained/
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