Fatal Familial Insomnia – A Rare form of Sleep Disorder

This kind of sleeping disorder is very rare and being a disorder that is spread through genetic route it has been noted to occur only in about 28 families all over the world. The chances of offspring inheriting this condition if present in the parent are about 50%.

Sleep Disorder Diagnosis

There is also no known cure for the condition. It usually sets in between the age group of 30 to 60 years and continues to exist anywhere between 7 and 18 months. There are four stages of the condition with stage 1 lasting for around 4 months with symptoms of severe insomnia (sleeplessness), panic attacks and a variety of phobias. The second stage exists for about five months and symptoms include increasing amount of panic attacks and hallucinations. The third stage is characterized by total sleeplessness during the period and persists for about three months with severe amount of weight loss. The final stage is characterized by dementia and the patient progressively turning mute and irresponsive. This stage goes on for about six months or so.

The condition very much resembles Alzheimer’s disease although the rate of progress in this condition is much quicker than what you will see in Alzheimer’s disease where the patient develops problems like dementia over a long period of time spanning over many years unlike the short period of a year with familial insomnia.

Therapy has no effect on the condition and no medication will help in overcoming the sleeplessness. In fact, there is no cure for the rapidly progressing condition and the medical fraternity is totally baffled as to why the condition has fatal prognosis. There are many studies that are going on including genetic study to understand more about the condition and how it can be overcome and treated successfully.

It all depends on the amount of interest this condition garners among the medical fraternity and finds ways and means of increasing the amount of research and genetic testing of the families along with detailed studies about the condition so that the disease progress can be tracked and checked to see which of the next generations are acquiring the condition or skipping it so that some amount of direction can be achieved in which the research can progress.

Being a more uncommon condition, this disease is not getting the kind of attention that other sleep disorders are generating. Also, since the number of cases is quite less owing to the rarity of the condition, there are not many cases that doctors can effectively study and arrive at conclusions. So, it is but common to give more attention to the 60 million or so cases of different forms of sleep disorders rather than one that is affecting such a minimal population.

But, the advent of new technology every day carries the hope that at some point of time or the other, a cure will be found to treat the condition and get rid of it. Till such time, the only thing that people suffering from this disorder can do is to make their life as comfortable as possible and hope and pray.

Resources:
Fatal Familial Insomnia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

Fatal Familial Insomnia by: Ann M. Akroush
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu

Family battles fatal insomnia
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6822468/