We discover an unusual cause of brain swelling and are properly warned. This is easily added to the checklist to work up when behaviour change is observed.
I have seen cases of diagnosed mental illness in which it was also obvious the the body was fighting something else as well and could well have been related to brain swelling.
We really need a smart way to detect inflammation in the brain. This should actually be possible..
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What killed the cute Knut? Scientists solve riddle 4 years after polar bear died at Berlin Zoo
By Frank Jordans, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Thu, 27 Aug, 2015
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/killed-cute-knut-scientists-solve-riddle-4-years-153947842.html
BERLIN
- The sudden death four years ago of Knut, the celebrity Berlin Zoo
polar bear who ended up on the cover of Vanity Fair, shocked his fans
around the world and posed a riddle for veterinarians anxious to keep
other animals from suffering the same fate.
What killed Knut?
The answer turned out to be even more useful than scientists could have hoped for.
Researchers
in Germany said Thursday they have found the cause of Knut's untimely
demise — and the discovery may help raise awareness of a condition that
affects humans, possibly saving lives.
The four-year-old bear died
in March 2011 after suffering an apparent seizure and collapsing into
his enclosure's pool in front of hundreds of visitors at the Berlin Zoo.
His short life came as a surprise — polar bears can live for up to 20
years in the wild and sometimes longer in captivity.
A necropsy
quickly established that Knut suffered from encephalitis, a swelling of
the brain. Initially, scientists thought the inflammation had been
caused by an infection, but that theory was later discounted.
"At
the beginning of 2014, we had basically exhausted every option," said
Alex Greenwood of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research,
which led much of the initial research into Knut's death. Greenwood said
his team shelved their samples, figuring it might take decades to
figure out why Knut died.
Then they got a call from Harald Pruess,
a neurologist at Berlin's Charite hospital and a researcher at the
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
Pruess said he
noticed that Knut's case showed similarities to some of his human
patients who suffered from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. The
autoimmune disease, in which the body attacks its own brain cells, was
only discovered in humans eight years ago and never previously found in
animals.
"It was a bit of a long shot, but after six or eight weeks we saw that it really was that," Greenwood told The Associated Press.
Had Knut's keepers known what their star attraction was suffering from, he likely could have been treated, said Greenwood.
Humans
with the condition are given cortisone, a drug that suppresses the
immune system until the body can recover. In most cases they are able to
return to a normal life, though some suffer from memory problems and
have difficulty concentrating.
Pruess, the neurologist, said
Knut's case may help raise awareness of what is still a relatively
unknown illness in humans. The disease, which affects at least one in
200,000 people each year and often involves sudden behavioural changes,
can be detected with a simple procedure.
Greenwood said Knut's
misfortune — he might have survived if he hadn't fallen into the water —
was a stroke of luck for scientists.
"It's
just for us incredible that the most famous bear in the world dies and
it turns out to be the first description of this disease," said
Greenwood. "The knowledge gained from his death should benefit both
human medicine, because people will know the Knut disease and be more
aware of it, and animal medicine."
Their research was published Thursday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
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