New Brunswick has no mystery neurological disease, scientific study concludes – CBC
Report published in U.S. medical journal reassessed 25 of 222 patients diagnosed with unknown syndrome
May 07, 2025
A new scientific study has found no evidence of a mystery brain disease in New Brunswick, says a report published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, known as JAMA.
Instead, an independent reassessment of 25 of 222 patients diagnosed by Moncton neurologist Alier Marrero as having a “neurological syndrome of unknown cause” concluded that all of the cases were attributable to well-known conditions.
These include common neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, functional neurological disorder, traumatic brain injury, and metastatic cancer, says the report.
Despite the small sample size, “when we did the statistics … the chances of any of those other individuals having a mystery disease was less than one in a million,” said Dr. Anthony Lang, a senior neurologist and neuroscientist in Toronto, and one of the 13 co-authors.
