'Rare' brain disorder may be more common than thought, say Mayo Clinic scientists

via sciencedaily.com

This article contains both good and bad news. It's good news that modern science has found a way to identify a "rare" genetic disorder, but bad news to find out it may be much more common than previously thought.

This neurological disorder is devastating, leading to death of the patient between ages 40 and 60.

What happens is that the brain's white matter deteriorates. In previous years, in many cases, patients were misdiagnosed with having schizophrenia, epilepsy, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke or an array of other disorders or diseases.

Because of this misdiagnosis, many patients were treated with drugs that only proved to have toxic side effects, and provided no help whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the disorder (called leukoencephalopathy with spheroids - HDLS - can run in families). The genetic nature of this disorder means that entire families can carry this gene and in fact, because of this new research, entire family clans have been identified as carriers. All carriers have the active form of HDLS.