THE PEOPLE WHO CAN’T SLEEP
Sometimes the worst nightmares are the ones you don’t have. There are numerous conditions, disorders, and illnesses that either limit or prevents the amount of sleep an individual is able to get. Many of them are quite dangerous, but none of them are as frightening or rare as fatal familial insomnia. Prion diseases are a category of rare fatal brain diseases that can strike both humans and animals. The disease hits the nervous system and impairs essential brain functions, which can cause memory loss, decrease in intelligence, personality and behavioral changes, and insomnia. It is caused by an altered and mutated PRNP gene, inherited from a parent, that manifests itself in misshapen protein cells that can pop up in brain tissue. In humans, there are five known prion diseases: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome, Kuru, and Fatal Familial Insomnia. There are six known animal prion diseases, including bovine spon
