Kalachi: Kazakh Village Plagued by Mystery Sleeping Illness

[Schwadevivre]

Via the BBC; News from Elsewhere blog

Villagers in Kalachi, northern Kazakhstan, have been suffering from the unexplained condition for about two years. It causes people to fall asleep suddenly, sometimes for several days, and those affected have also complained of memory loss and in some cases hallucinations. More than 100 cases have been reported in the village, which has been nicknamed "Sleepy Hollow", and some people have been affected more than once. Now the heads of neighbouring districts are offering to move the villagers to new homes and jobs elsewhere, the Interfax news agency reports. Priority is being given to the families who have children in the village, the deputy head of Esil district, Saule Agymbayeva, tells the agency. More than half of the village's 582 residents plan to relocate, the report says.

as usual some people have suggested "Mass Psychosis" (read hysteria) as a possible cause.

 

[Loquaciousness]

Could even be something as simple as a virus.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

That's a fair point, having a quick read about narcolepsy, some narcoleptic disorders have been linked to viruses and some to a flu vaccine in children. Might be genetic? Also it might be something like an auto-immune disorder caused by exposure to pesticides. Be very interesting to see if people stop having episodes once they move away.

Is anyone doing any testing I wonder?

 

[Loquaciousness]

Funnily enough I was just teaching the aetiology of narcolepsy today!

 

[Naughty_Felid]

More info from another site, can't post the link as it seems to have some malware attached which was picked up by my malwarebytes.




"by Elena Kosolapova - Trend: The story developing in a small settlement in northern Kazakhstan is worthy of a plot for popular American science fiction television drama series, "The X-Files."

The residents of the Kazakh village of Kalachi are racking with a mysterious disease that could not be explained by a wide range of specialists in medicine and many other specialized fields.

The villagers complain of severe fatigue and constant desire to sleep. They can suddenly fall asleep in the most unexpected places - at work, at school, in the street - and sleep for several days. Nobody and nothing can wake them up. And after waking up some of them lose memory, have hallucinations, and behave like in a dream.

The first case of the manifestation of this sleeping disease occurred in Kalachi in March 2013. And the disease breaks out once every few months. Ten percent of the village population exceeding 600 people has been infected with this disease.

The strangest thing that despite the authorities' investigation with the involvement of local and invited specialists, the cause of the sickness remains a mystery. The scientists conducted thousands of experiments on soil, air and water in the village and the diseased patients, but the only thing they could say the people are quite healthy and the symptoms they experience do not fit into any of the known diseases.
Some kind of sleeping sickness, which also called "human African trypanosomiasis," is a widespread tropical disease. But besides permanent desire to sleep the symptoms of this disease are different. Moreover African disease is spread by a bite of an infected tsetse fly living dozens of thousands kilometers far from Kazakhstan. And bacteriological and viral tests on Kalachi's villagers have proved negative.
Local people are in despair. They think the authorities are hiding the truth about the disease and invent a number of fantastic explanations of its reasons from biology experiments conducted by western laboratories to aliens and God's punishment.

However there are some versions which are more real at first glance. Kalachi is located in the vicinity of former Soviet secret uranium mining town Krasnogorsk, which was closed after Soviet Union's collapse about 20 years ago. Some people associate abnormal sleep with the abandoned uranium mine. But scientists working at the scene say that the radiation level is normal across the village. Moreover the unfortunate Kalachi is the only village affected by this strange sickness and the dwellers of other settlements located nearby and even those who worked in the uranium mine for all their life are safe and sound.

Local nuclear specialists also assure that radiation sickness does not produce sleeping effects. Western experts share their opinion on this issue.
"In my work so far I have never heard of radiation causing any sleeping disease," Britt-Marie Drottz Sjoberg, psychology professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who has lead and participated in a number of researches and projects relation to public reactions to radiation, radioactive waste and environmental issues told Trend by e-mail.

"I doubt that uranium is the cause of the sleeping sickness... There is no such thing as "normal" for radiation levels... they should be published and compared to places without uranium mining operations," Janette Sherman, M.D. specializing in internal medicine and toxicology with an emphasis on chemicals and nuclear radiation who earlier worked for the Atomic Energy Commission at the University of California in Berkeley, and for the U.S. Navy Radiation Defense Laboratory in San Francisco and published a number of researches on nuclear radiation also told Trend by e-mail.

Now all the people suffering from the disease in Kalachi are diagnosed with encephalopathy of unknown origin, i.e. brain damage by unknown substance. The substance was not defined.

Kazakh Health Ministry informed that the disease had classic signs of narcolepsy and some psychologists and psychiatrists explain the disease by massive psychosis.

"There have been many such unexplained events. Some of them have been caused by agents such as virus that were discovered later, such as von economo encephalitis, others by vaccines, most have been unexplained medically and assumed to be mass hysteria," Maurice Preter, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry on the faculty of Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons and is Adj. Associate Professor of Neurology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center told Trend by e-mail.

A special commission was created from specialists from several Kazakh ministries to investigate the situation in Kalachi. But the only problem revealed by the commission in the village so far was the higher level of radon gas in air. This gas used in anesthesiology could be the cause of the abnormal sleep, according one of the numerous versions, the scientists say. However the commission does not announce when the investigation is expected to be completed.

Meanwhile extrasensory individuals, sorcerers and ufologists explain the disease by weird by extraterrestrial reasons.

The last wave of the mysterious disease happened on September 1. Nine children fell asleep immediately after festive ceremony on the occasion of new academic year and slept for two days. And this time the patients' symptoms have aggravated compared to the last year. The diseased people have nightmares, hallucinations and some signs of insanity. Thus, the problem requires prompt solution and should not be delayed. Maybe the truth is out there."

 

[Schwadevivre]

Thanks

 

[Schwadevivre]

Yet more found in Siberian Times

Siberian woman becomes latest victim of unexplained sleep epidemic
A Siberian woman visiting relatives in Kazakhstan has become the latest victim of a strange epidemic that has spread through a remote village sending people to sleep.

Novosibirsk resident Aliya Kurukhtina, 59, had travelled to Kalachi to be with her family and celebrate New Year when she suddenly fell ill.

Having unexpectedly fallen asleep, and showing other symptoms of the mystery condition, she was taken to the local hospital on the evening of January 1. Doctors gave her a diagnosis of the brain disorder 'encephalopathy of unknown aetiology', but it is thought she is a victim of the unexplained illness that affecting the town.

Four other women were treated on the same evening for the same symptoms of the condition, which has so far puzzled scientists and doctors.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Airborne virus then, if someone who's just visiting has got it.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Yet more found in Siberian Times

Great article, some classic pics too.

It's nice that that chef is keeping that old lady company. What's Russian for "Can I interest you in a Bacon Sandwich?"

 

[ramonmercado]

A leading Russian professor investigating the causes of the mysterious sleeping disorder affecting hundreds of residents in Kalachi, a village in northern Kazakhstan, believes that the disease could spread, and admits that scientists are still unsure as to what is causing it. His warning comes as the ninth wave of the unidentified illness hit the area this week.

Those affected by the illness very suddenly fall asleep at any time of day or night, and often it is not possible to wake them for a few days. Some remember nothing when they awake and complain of drowsiness, while others say they experienced terrifying hallucinations. Over 150 cases of the disease have been reported since the first complaints by residents were made in March 2013, yet there is still no common consensus on what is causing the nightmarish disease....

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...n-sleeping-sickness-‘could-spread’/ar-BBieqcM

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Move over Ebola.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Caused by Carbon Monoxide/hydrocarbons from old mines suppressing the oxygen in the air

http://mentalfloss.com/article/84543/mystery-behind-kazakh-towns-sleeping-sickness

For clarity and archival purposes, here's the relevant text from the linked article:

Were people being poisoned? Or was it just a case of mass psychogenic illness (essentially mass hysteria), like the “dancing plague” or the numerous population-wide panics throughout history over shrinking penises?

Finally, in the summer of 2015, authorities announced that they had discovered the culprit: high concentrations of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons coming from the mines caused a lack of oxygen in the air in the area. By the time the announcement came in the summer of 2015, 150 people had already moved away, while another 240 were on a list of people seeking resettlement. Still, a radiologist who had been studying the outbreak told BuzzFeed that the verdict was “only the working theory,” and that researchers were still studying the medical anomaly. In late December of that year, scientists from the National Nuclear Center of Kazakhstan confirmed this explanation.