The chief clinical features of FFI include a progressive and ferocious insomnia, waking "sleep," hallucinations, autonomic disturbances suggestive of sympathetic overdrive (tachycardia ...

Context: Fatal familial insomnia (FFI) is a genetically transmitted neurodegenerative prion disease that incurs great suffering and has neither a treatment nor a cure. The clinical literature is ...

The genetic history of sisters Carolyn Schear (at right) and Cheryl Dinges puts them at risk for fatal familial insomnia, a deadly inability to sleep. Schear learned she doesn’t carry the gene.