From mystery disease to college complaint: Province's top doctor hit with new challenge

New Brunswick’s chief medical officer is at the centre of a complaint involving a mystery neurological syndrome that was reported last year to have affected 48 residents. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick received a complaint on March 24 against Dr. Jennifer Russell, alleging that she had mishandled the investigation into the mystery syndrome that was baffling enough that provincial and national teams of researchers and scientists—including Health Canada's Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System—assembled to take a closer look, CBC News reported. The complaint was filed by Nova Scotia resident Steve Ellis whose father, Roger Ellis, was among the confirmed cases of the syndrome, which the New Brunswick government had first warned about last March in an internal memo that described "a distinct atypical neurological syndrome" causing symptoms ranging from muscle spasms to visual hallucinations. Read: N.B. health officials tracking cluster of patients with unknown neurological syndrome In his complaint, Ellis alleges that Dr. Russell misled his father, failed to communicate “in a transparent manner” and “withheld information that my father had a right to obtain.” He also accused Dr. Russell of providing inaccurate information to families in a private meeting “initiated by her office and (Health) Minister Dorothy Shephard.” Despite the high level of interest in the mystery syndrome, New Brunswick’s Public Health department subsequently ruled that no such disease existed. The conclusion was announced after an oversight committee, made up primarily of neurologists from the province, reviewed records from the cluster of 48 patients and determined that while some have unusual symptoms, there was no common, unknown illness among them. Some patients were unhappy with the announcement, which was made towards the end of February, and called for the province to investigate further. Read: Oversight committee rules out mysterious brain disease in New Brunswick "The oversight committee has unanimously agreed that these 48 people should never have been identified as having a neurological syndrome of unknown cause and that based on the evidence reviewed, no such syndrome exists," Dr. Russell said in that announcement. In his complaint, Ellis alleges that the oversight committee never saw or examined his father in person, but had suggested several possible explanations for his symptoms. He also took issue with the committee not providing a final diagnosis to the patients, even though it had stated there were several potential alternative diagnoses for 41 of the 48 patients. Ellis also questioned why Public Health did not test for blue-green algae and B-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA)—which had identified as a possible culprit by a B.C. neurologist—as possible factors for the patients’ symptoms. Read: Unraveling the biology of a mysterious condition: stuttering Ellis said he recorded a private meeting where he asked Dr. Russell why these tests weren’t done. "What she told us was that there was no need for them to do testing for BMAA and that they were unable to do testing on the waterways because there were no algae blooms present last summer," he said. But Ellis pointed out that the Irishtown Park in Moncton was closed last July because of blue-green algae blooms. "And that's in the area where a lot of the cases are concentrated,” he said. “We don't know for sure that it's BMAA, of course, but how do you know if you don't rule things out? You have to test." The college declined to comment on the complaint. On Friday, March 25, a Public Health spokesperson told the CBC that Dr. Russell "has yet to receive any correspondence related to this kind of complaint." Read: Unusual cases

From mystery disease to college complaint: Province's top doctor hit with new challenge

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics