Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) is a rare genetic neurodegenerative disease. It belongs to a family of diseases called prion diseases which are caused by infectious proteins. This is somewhat unique in the world of biology: until 20 years ago everyone thought that you needed a a virus or bacterium or some other parasite — something with DNA or RNA — in order to have an infectious agent. It was Stanley Prusiner at UCSF who championed the idea that proteins were the infectious agent in some diseases, an idea that is now widely accepted and for which Prusiner won a Nobel Prize in 1997.
FFI has no known cure and involves progressively worsening insomnia, which leads to hallucinations, delirium, and confusional states like that of dementia. The average survival span for patients diagnosed with FFI after the onset of symptoms is 18 months. The mutated protein, called PrPSc, has been found…
