The mystery of the 200-year-old "curse" that caused a family to die suddenly, in middle age

A prestigious family in Italy has had to live in the terrifying obsession of mysterious and unusual deaths for nearly two centuries. This makes many people shudder.

That is the Giacomo family, a family in which over the past two centuries, nearly 100 people have passed away one after another at the age of 40 - 50 with exactly the same symptoms: unable to sleep until death. World medical literature has many questions that have existed for hundreds of years, and only now have answers.

However, solving the mystery does not mean solving the problem. To this day, descendants of this family still face foretold deaths without any way to cope. And so many believe that this famous family is beset by a curse.

The story begins with Giacomo Meyerbeer, a healthy man born in 1791 in a small town in Venice. Giacomo's family was a middle-class family living in a small town near Venice. Like his five siblings, the young man grew up healthy and full of life.

Born into a family with a tradition of art, Meyerbeer quickly became an excellent composer. At the age of 24, he married a healthy and beautiful woman and gave birth to a beautiful child. His career was going well with a beautiful wife and good children, life seemed to be happier than anything. Until he suddenly contracted a mysterious illness in 1836, at the age of 45.

For months, Meyerbeer could not sleep, not even for a few minutes. Although he had been treated by many famous doctors, his illness did not improve. Doctors in the country had to admit that they were helpless because all their efforts were ineffective.

After a while, the composer lost his memory and died in a state of complete exhaustion due to insomnia. His tragedy was thought to be just an accident, but the terrifying truth is that similar deaths continued to happen to his descendants for nearly 200 years.

The Giacomo family grew and prospered, their descendants became famous businessmen, doctors, and politicians. However, parallel to that success were strange premature deaths in middle age, for which no doctor could give a satisfactory explanation.

When looking back at their family tree, the Giacomo descendants were horrified to discover a common point: Generations suffered from strange symptoms such as epilepsy, meningitis, high fever, and most frighteningly, prolonged insomnia leading to exhaustion and painful death. In the 20th century alone, about 30 people in the Giacomo family died in such an "unexpected" way.

Because of these mysterious and recurring deaths, people believed that the Giacomo family was "cursed" by some supernatural force. The family's reputation was even severely affected, many people were afraid to marry family members, and even life insurance companies did not dare to accept because the risk was too high.

This family lineage has become increasingly isolated and shrunk, with fewer and fewer members in the next generations. They are even avoided by the locals, and have little contact with them because they do not want to be infected with the unnamed, terrible disease.

Many people believe that because they have done something unforgivable in the past, their descendants will have to suffer the consequences, and the consequences will be nothing less than death. Drowning in bad rumors, most members of the Giacomo family became depressed.

It was not until 1986 that the mystery was gradually revealed. Scientists discovered the real cause of these consecutive deaths, not due to a "curse" but due to a rare genetic disease called Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) - a fatal hereditary insomnia. The disease prevents patients from sleeping deeply, leading to rapid physical and mental exhaustion.

Scientists discovered that FFI is caused by a spike in a protein in the brain called a prion, the smallest infectious agent known to medicine, which causes mad cow disease. When middle age comes, prions begin to multiply uncontrollably and form nests that damage neurons.

Soon after discovering the pathogen, Italian scientists tested nerve cells from living members of the Giacomo family and found that at least 25 people still carried mutated prions.

Once the body's resistance is reduced and there is an excessive accumulation of abnormal prions in nerve cells, there will be a neurodegenerative disorder, causing the carrier to have behavioral changes, sleep disorders, memory loss, along with abnormalities in touch and hearing, high blood pressure... All of these attack the patient at the same time, causing death to come quickly.

The disease occurs in only about 30 families worldwide. If a parent carries the gene that causes FFI, there is a 50% chance that their child will inherit it and develop the disease. Once symptoms appear, patients typically only live for a maximum of 18 months. Sadly, scientists have yet to find an effective treatment for FFI.

This means that anyone who suffers from the disease will certainly face a painful and inevitable death. The story of the Giacomo family has shown that sometimes what people consider "curses" or "bad omens" are actually just undiscovered scientific phenomena.

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