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Documentary Probes Death from Lack of Sleep (CNN)

— Rare genetic disease with 50/50 odds of transmission and no cure

MedpageToday

"Something's Killing Me: A Family Curse," a documentary to be broadcast on the HLN cable channel, highlights the mysterious condition of fatal familial insomnia (FFI), .

The documentary is a case study of three families -- one Indian, one Italian, and one Australian -- who have suffered for generations from a form of insomnia so extreme that it eventually kills those with it.

Misattributed as nervous exhaustion, encephalitis, and even schizophrenia, the disease was only named by the medical profession in 1986, and is believed to be caused by rogue prion proteins, as in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Scientists were able to investigate this deadly disease when a member of one of the families donated his brain to the University of Bologna, where his thalamus was found to be riddled with tiny holes.