8 of the strangest diseases and syndromes known to science

1. fishy smell syndrome

Otherwise, the disease is called trimethylaminuriaS. C. Mitchell, R. L. Smith. Trimethylaminuria: the fish malodor syndrome / Drug Metabolism & Disposition. This is an inherited metabolic disorder in which the liver is unable to break down trimethylamine, a by-product of protein digestion. Due to its accumulation in the body, sweat, urine and exhaled air begin to smell like fish.

Naturally, this leads to problems with others. Moreover, the patient himself most often does not feel his own aroma and does not understand at all why everyone shuns him.

For unknown reasons, this disease is more often meetsAbout Trimethylaminuria / National Human Genome Research lnstitute in women than in men. Scientists believe that oral contraceptives and the sex hormone progesterone contribute to its development. Sometimes the syndrome also appears in people with a diseased liver after hepatitis.

So far, there is no way to completely cure trimethylaminuria. But from the smell get rid ofH. mountain. Trimethylaminuria (fish malodour syndrome): a “benign” genetic condition with major psychosocial sequelae / Medical Journal of Australia with a special diet - avoiding foods high in protein and choline, legumes, red meat and fish. In addition, dietary supplements with activated charcoal and copper chlorophyllin help to reduce the visibility of the fishy aroma.

2. Urbach-Vite disease

This is a rather rare genetic disease: in the world knownW. D. James. Andrews' Diseases of the Skin: Clinical Dermatology less than 300 cases. Interestingly, at least a quarter of the patients lived in South Africa. The disease causes damage to the amygdala in the brain, which leads to the disappearance of fear.

True, at the same time, the person suffering from it does not lose the instinct of self-preservation, so the disease is considered not life-threatening.

If you think that the absence of fear is good, then we hasten to disappoint you. Patients also have dermatological symptoms such as lesions and scarring, skin wrinkling, and poor wound healing. Appear on mucous membranes and tongue abscesses and abscesses, and the voice becomes hoarse and hoarse.

The disease has yet to be cured. True, still scare those suffering from this disease canM. Costandi. Researchers scare ‘fearless’ patients / Nature. To do this, you need to provide the patient with inhalation of air with a high - about 35% - content of carbon dioxide. Fearlessness will disappear for a while, and the patient will panic, feeling that he is suffocating.

3. facial blindness

This disease is also called prosopagnosiaJ. McNeil. Prosopagnosia: A face-specific disorder / The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology, or facial agnosia (from the Greek. "misrecognition"). Occurs when the right lower-occipital region of the brain is damaged. Those suffering from it cannot remember human faces - even the closest and most familiar people.

Some are not able to recognize their own face and are frightened when looking in the mirror. And other patients even lose the ability to distinguish men from women.

Informally, the disease is sometimes called the Humpty Dumpty syndrome: in Lewis Carroll's book Alice Through the Looking Glass, this character claimed that he did not remember the faces of his interlocutors, in particular, the main character.

Usually people get sickJ. McNeil. Prosopagnosia: A face-specific disorder / The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology prosopagnosia after head injuries, but there are also congenital cases. Sometimes the disease develops in old age, and, for reasons unknown to science, mainly in left-handers.

There is no cure, but techniques have been developed to help people with this syndrome: they are taught to recognize friends, for example, by their walk or tone of voice. By the way, it was this disease that formed the basis of the film “Faces in crowdwith Milla Jovovich.

4. alien hand syndrome

Do you remember the movie Dr. Strangelove? Kubrick. Or Killer Hand with Jessica Alba. Or the second season of Scream Queens. All of them featured characters suffering from the fact that their own hands did not obey them. Do you think this doesn't happen in reality? No matter how.

The German neurologist Kurt Goldstein described disorder1. The alien hand syndrome: What makes the alien hand alien? / Cognitive Neuropsychology,
2. Alien hand syndrome / MedLink Neurology, in which one or even both hands ceased to obey the owner and began to do all sorts of game. In particular, one of his patients was strangled in her sleep by her own left limb.

Also, hands can pinch, twist nipples, comb and pull out hair. Sometimes such behavior was observed: the patient takes, say, a cigarette with one hand, puts it in his mouth, and the non-dominant limb pulls it out and throws it away. Or the patient fastens her blouse with one hand, and unzips it back with the other.

The disease develops when the connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain are disrupted. It is sometimes referred to as "Dr. Strangelove's disease".

CausesSensory alien hand syndrome: case report and review of the literature / Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry alien hand syndrome can be brain tumors, infections, strokes, or Alzheimer's disease. And it also occurs after unsuccessful operations. For example, in the 1950s, the brain hemispheres were surgically separated to alleviate severe cases of epilepsy. The disease really stopped, but the hands went crazy.

5. stone man syndrome

official titleFibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva / National Organization for Rare Disorders - progressive fibrodysplasia ossificans. It is also called Münchmeyer's syndrome. This is a rare genetic disease in which the connective tissue of the body, that is, muscles, ligaments and tendons, gradually turns into bones. It appears at the age of about 10 years and progresses over the years.

The body of the unfortunate, affected by the Münchmeyer syndrome, literally builds up a second skeleton on top of the first.

the earliest symptomFibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva / National Library of Medicine POF is a developmental disorder of the big toes. In patients, they are curved inwards and may lack joints. Abnormal bone tissue first forms on the shoulders and neck, then the disease gradually descends lower to the legs. Patients may experience problems with movement, eating, and even breathing because their joints fused into a single bone.

There is currently no cure for the disease. The frequency of its spread is one sick person in two million healthy people. People affected by POF should avoid the slightest injury, because when wounds heal, they are covered not with connective tissue, but with bone tissue.

6. Teratoma

Cancer is a terrible thing, but teratomaC. Sergi, V. Ehemann. Huge fetal sacrococcygeal teratoma with a completely formed eye and intratumoral DNA ploidy heterogeneity / Pediatric and Developmental Pathology especially terrifying. This is a tumor that forms most often in the female ovaries or male testicles. But it can also appear in the sacrococcygeal region, and occasionally even in the brain, on the jaws, in the nasal cavity or in lungs.

Due to an incomprehensible failure in the mechanism of stem cell division, the body begins to grow tissues or even entire organs in places that are completely unsuitable for this structurally. The tumor may contain hair, muscle, bone, and even an underdeveloped eye, torso, limb, or teeth. Most often, teratoma is found in very young children.

But there are times when adults walk with her for years and do not realize that they have teeth and hair in their insides.

For example, one woman in Brazil under 25 livedT. K. Bento da Silva. Teratoma: a set of teeth in the pelvis Teratoma: a set of teeth in the pelvis / SciELO with teeth and hair in the ovaries. Another happeningS. Consolato. Huge Fetal Sacrococcygeal Teratoma with a Completely Formed Eye and Intratumoral DNA Ploidy Heterogeneity / Pediatric and Developmental Pathology: in 1997, doctors operated on a newborn girl who found... a fully formed third eye in the sacrum. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive the surgery.

Another patient, a three-year-old boy who required surgery in 2016, luckyD. Dubinsky. Immature teratoma of the tectum mesencephali with histopathological detection of rudimentary eye anlage in a 3-year-old boy: Report of a rare case / Neuropathology more. An eye was also found in him, moreover, in the brain, and after its removal the patient went on the mend.

7. water allergy

She is aquagenic urticariaThe woman who is allergic to water / BBC Future - an autoimmune disease, an extremely rare form of physical urticaria. There are approximately 32 people in the world who suffer from it.

The patient develops a rash and blisters on contact with water. And with any - fresh, salty. The same reaction is caused by sweat, saliva and tears. However, the water contained inside the body does not have such an effect.

The causes of aquagenic urticaria are unknown.

It has been suggested that the reason for this is the increased sensitivity of the skin of patients to the ions contained in undistilled water.

This allergy is more common in women and manifests itself during puberty. Patients succeed wash upAquagenic urticaria / Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center in the shower only after applying a cream based on an emulsion of oil or petroleum jelly to the skin.

Drinking is also difficult. One 21-year-old woman in the UK solved the problem by going almost completely off water and switching to Diet Coke and milk, because the usual H2O "burned her like a nettle."

Sometimes the disease succeeds suspendA. M. Frances. Aquagenic urticaria: report of a case / Allergy and Asthma Proceedings taking strong antihistamines, but not always. There were no cases of remission by medicine.

8. walking corpse syndrome

Official name - Cotard's syndromeG. E. Berrios, R. luque. Cotard's delusion or syndrome? / Comprehensive Psychiatry. It has nothing to do with zombie viruses - it's purely a psychological disorder. It seems to the one suffering from it that he is already dead and decomposing. Either all of his blood has flowed out, sepsis has begun, or there are no internal organs - there is no heart or the intestines have rotted.

Disease openedG. E. Berrios, R. luque. Cotard's 'On Hypochondriacal Delusions in a Severe form of Anxious Melancholia / History of Psychiatry in 1880 by the French neurologist Jules Cotard. He described the case of a woman who convinced herself that she had died long ago and simply stopped eating. She said that she was doomed to the "eternal damnation" of immortality, and there was no longer any need for her to eat. And, of course, she died of banal hunger.

The disease occurs in psychosis, for example schizophrenia and depression, or trauma and brain tumors. Some patients claim that not only they died, but in general all living things in the world, and the world itself in general soon after that. Particularly conscientious individuals worry that it was they who killed everyone, accidentally infected them with HIV, syphilis or something else, and soon a terrible punishment awaits them.

And other patients, without trifles, assure that they are not just dead, but have never existed at all.

About how they died, patients with Cotard's syndrome may inventA. G. Nejad. Effect of Cultural Themes on Forming Cotard's Syndrome: Reporting a Case of Cotard's Syndrome with Depersonalization and Out of Body Experience Symptoms / Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences very impressive stories, based on their intellectual and cultural background. For example, a guy who convinced himself that he died of AIDS had previously read an article in a magazine about this disease. And one Iranian woman with postpartum depression thought she was killed by a character in Persian folklore, a ghost named Aal.

However, the disease can cureP. W. Halligan, J. C. Marshall. Method in Madness: Case Studies in Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. A case is described of how one man developed Cotard's syndrome after a brain injury: he was convinced that he was dead, stopped recognizing familiar people and believed that everyone he saw was dead too.

Later, after treatment and restoration of the brain, the patient decided that, after all, the people around him were quite alive. But about himself, he was still not sure - did he die of AIDS or sepsis, just in between times, without noticing it? Finally, after a month of psychotherapy, the patient spontaneously recovered and got rid of the illusion of his own death. Apparently, he realized that for a dead man he goes to the doctor too often.