From terrifying rare diseases caused by nasty parasites to scary psychological conditions
that can kill you, here are 15 of the most horrifying rare diseases that you don't want to have.
Number 15.
Elephantiasis. This is one of those classic terrifying diseases, which causes massive
thickening of the skin and underlying tissue, usually effecting the legs and male genitalia.
Yes, your scrotum can swell to the size of a basketball. Like so much wrong with the
world, it's caused by a worm, its symbiotic bacteria and a mosquito. That's right, those
flying little bastards can give you the parasite that'll permanently destroy the lower half
of your body. Thankfully, this is one of those horrible diseases that we're actually beating,
and it's predicted to be eradicated by 2020.
Number 14.
Trimethylaminuria. You have to feel sorry for the sufferers of this condition, also
called fish odor syndrome. It's exactly what it sounds like. A permanent pathological scent
of rotting fish clings to your body. It's actually linked to your metabolism, which
interferes with the body's ability to break down trimethylamine, which builds up and is
excreted through saliva, sweat and urine. It's incurable, recessive, and still around.
If you're a sufferer of this, I suppose you might as well become a fishmonger and just
blame it on the business.
Number 13.
Guinea Worm Disease. Also known as Dracunculiasis, is like one of those horrible stories that
people tell you about travelling to third world countries. First you swallow the baby
worm from dirty water, at which point it happily chills out in your digestive tract for a year,
before metamorphosing into something much nastier. It then migrates to a limb and forms
a large and incredibly painful blister. And do you know how they get it out? They fish
out one end with a small hook, and pull it out slowly over the course of days or weeks
of agony. If you try and pull it out too fast it snaps, recoiling back into the body
to live again.
Number 12.
Filarial Worm. This seriously horrible parasite if what can cause Elephantiasis, but what
makes this even worse is the simple fact that it can live in your eye. Why would the universe
create something as purely evil as a parasite that lives in your bloody eyeball? Even worse,
there are some leeches that can also latch onto your eyeball. But you know what's really
scary about the Filarial worm? It's so common that it's the second most common cause of
blindness in the world. That means it happens to tons of people. My eyes are sore just thinking about it.
Number 11.
Cancrum Oris. Commonly called Noma, is gangrene of the face, and for some reason it seems
to hit kids more often than adults. More than 80% of those affected by the disease die,
as it eats away at the tissue and musculature around their jaws. It's an opportunistic infection
that likes to hop on board in situations where people are malnourished, have unclean drinking
water, poor dental hygiene, and live in close proximity to farm animals. So pretty much
any third world country. What's even worse is that it's especially prevalent in the immuno-compromised,
like HIV+ kids growing up in southern Africa. The poor buggers!
Number 10.
Blaschko's Lines. It turns out we all have Blaschko's Lines, but they're invisible under
normal conditions, until they show up due to a bunch of different disorders that can
cause the pigmentation on your skin to change. The lines show up as a v-shape on the back,
an s-shape on the foot, and weird wavy lines all over your head. They think the lines are
formed from where the embryonic cells are transported in-utero, but the weirdest thing
is there are more than nine different diseases that can cause you to be striped like a freaky zebra.
Number 9.
Fecal Vomiting. Okay, not a specific disease but it's still pretty gross. There are situations
where you will literally vomit up fecal matter. How fun is that? What usually happens is that
there's an intestinal block of some kind, so the mushed up food can't go all the way
through the system. Instead it starts to back up, slowly pushing its way back into the stomach,
where your body tries to get rid of it. And the only way out is up. You vomit up stuff
that isn't technically feces, but smells and I bet tastes exactly the same.
Aren't our bodies wonderful?
Number 8.
Cornu Cutaneum. These cutaneous horns are technically tumors, but look more like signs
of satanic possession than anything else. It's a tumor that causes horns to grow out
your skin, which is even creepier because how in the hell do we even possess the mechanisms
to grow horns? Hair, teeth, nails, all that stuff is already in the body, so when a tumor
causes it, it kind of makes sense. Technically it's keratin, the same stuff as fingernails,
but it's still really creepy. And they don't know what causes it, but they think it's linked
to HPV and radiation. So basically a sexually transmitted radioactive disease. Nice. Luckily
you can just chop them off at regular intervals.
Number 7.
Eumycetoma. Also known as Madura foot, this is a chronic fungal disease of the foot. It
isn't anything minor like athlete's foot, this is an entire tropical ecosystem established
on your extremities. You get the fungal infection from working on farm fields, where the spores
spread from the soil to open cuts on your feet. They quietly take root, and don't cause
any pain, just some milky discharge for up to a year. Then all of a sudden enormous pus
filled nodules all over your feet, all the way down to the bone. There's no vaccine or
real cure for the disease, leaving the treatment to antifungals or just amputation if they don't work.
Number 6.
Pica. This is odd in that it's a psychological disorder where people eat non-nutritious things
constantly. Like screws, chalk, mud, all sorts of things are devoured, but the cause is mental
rather than a virus or parasite causing them to act that way. At least in some forms they
obsess over eating unusual food ingredients like raw flour, which I suppose is better
than eating nails. This photo shows the contents of the stomach of one patient in a psychiatric
ward. That's how bad it can get. It's incredibly poorly understood and the treatments are experimental
at best.
Number 5.
Necrotizing Fasciitis. This flesh-eating bacteria, is far more common than we want it to be,
and any doctor you talk to will have seen the disorder at least once in their lifetime.
It tends to hit when you're already suffering from something else, like MRSA, HIV, diabetes
or alcoholism. Even worse is if it gets you, there's no saving the tissue. They just have
to cut out the affected bit, ideally just a few small lumps of skin, but potentially
a huge chunk of flesh or an entire limb.
Number 4.
Polyglandular Addison's Disease. Thank god this syndrome is so rare, because it scares
the hell out of me. Whenever you're surprised, shocked, or under heavy stress, you get sick
and could die. Scary movies, a close call on the road or just a balloon popping. All
of these could lead to your sudden and imminent death. The sufferers can't produce adrenaline,
so when it's meant to kick in for their systems, instead their organs go into shock and they
could die. If you have the disease, preferably not at all, wouldn't that suck? The doctor
tells you, and the shock of it kills you.
Number 3.
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. This actually gives me nightmares. It's a disease
where your body's repair mechanism is completely broken, and starts "healing" the fibrous tissue
like muscles, tendons and ligaments, by turning them into bone. That's right, your whole body
is slowly being petrified, as you excruciatingly transform into a creature formed of bone.
Except, it's bone without the smooth and mobile joints of the normal skeleton, so it's like
having a body filled with twigs that scrape and hinder every moment. You can't just simply
cut off the growths either, because that causes the repair system to kick into overdrive,
converting more of the body into bone and faster. There's no known treatment for the
450 sufferers worldwide, and in one famous case a sufferer survived up to the age 40,
at which point his entire body except his lips had transformed into bone, leaving him
completely immobile.
Number 2.
Harlequin Ichthyosis. This incredibly deadly mutation causes babies to have super-thick
skin which cracks where it should fold, leaving open wounds prone to infection. Their eyes,
orifices, and soft tissue are often painfully contracted, and moving can be agony for them.
More recently, the odds of a child hit with the disease living are greatly improved, and
the oldest recorded living person to have this disease is 27 year old.
Number 1.
Fatal Familial Insomnia. How terrifying is this? You can't sleep, and your insomnia is
so bad that you die! This inherited condition is untreatable, and usually kicks in around
the age of 50. Over the course of a couple of months, your insomnia gets increasingly
worse, leading to phobias and panic attacks. You start hallucinating and being unable to
eat, which causes massive weight loss. You become increasingly demented, and completely
isolated and withdrawn, before finally dying. It's a drawn out death sentence over the course
of 7 to 18 months, with no cure, and a promise of agony and madness. Sleeping pills make
it worse and actually speed up the disease. So next time you're lying in bed, struggling
to nod off at 2AM, remember this disease and start thinking about how well you've been sleeping lately.