A ‘family curse’: first insomnia, then death
CNN: Pierluigi Gambetti, professor of pathology, talked about his research on fatal familial insomnia, a rare, hereditary disease caused by abnormal prion proteins that damage the part of the thalamus that is crucial to the sleep-wake cycle. “The hope has to be always that you find a cure,” he said. “And therefore, maybe there will be a time in which we will cross out this adjective—’fatal’—from the name of the disease.”