Prion disease gets personal
Woman’s diagnosis turns her and her husband into scientists
Sonia Vallabh knows what will probably kill her.
In 2011, the Boston-area law school graduate learned she carries the same genetic mutation that caused her mother’s death from a rare brain-wasting prion disease. Prions are twisted forms of normal brain proteins that clump together and destroy nerves. About 10 to 15 percent of prion diseases are caused by a mutation in the PRNP gene, leading to such deadly diseases as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome and fatal familial insomnia, the disease that killed Vallabh’s mother.