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ESL ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL REVEALS FULL 2025 LINEUP
ESL ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL REVEALS FULL 2025 LINEUP

Associated Press

time16-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Associated Press

ESL ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL REVEALS FULL 2025 LINEUP

New York State's largest multidisciplinary performing arts festival presents more than 250 shows and 650 performances at over 30 venues in just12 days ROCHESTER, N.Y., July 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The ESL Rochester Fringe Festival held its annual 'Big Reveal' press conference today at the Memorial Art Gallery, announcing the full lineup for the 2025 Fringe, which takes place September 9 – 20. Tickets for all events go on sale TODAY at 12 NOON at or on the new ESL Rochester Fringe Festival App, which is available for download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Rochester's not-for-profit Fringe has become one of the largest, most successful, and most prominent fringe festivals in the nation, the largest multidisciplinary performing arts festivals in New York State, and one of the region's most anticipated festivals each year. The 2025 Fringe will feature more than 250 productions and 650 performances at over 30 venue locations in just 12 days. This includes returning favorites, festival debuts and major U.S. premieres of comedy, music, drama, dance, kids entertainment, magic, acrobats, jugglers and so much more. During today's press conference, Founding Festival Producer and CEO Erica Fee asked the audience, 'How will you Fringe,' emphasizing the range and specialness of options available. She further said, 'Fringe is something you have to experience and you get the freedom to choose!' Spectacular After a year hiatus, the free, public spectacle at Parcel 5 in the heart of downtown Rochester is returning to this year's Fringe, with four mind-bending performances of eVenti Verticali's SPHERE. Italy's eVenti Verticali is a performing troupe making their Fringe debut by bringing the magic of SPHERE to Rochester with a spectacle about our miraculous planet, and what can happen when greed, beauty, energy, fragility, and a collective embrace can occur. Picture a giant luminous sphere, suspended 60 feet in the air, surrounded by aerial dancers who abound with whimsy. Now add in mesmerizing lights, music and incredible acrobatics. The allure of the public spectacle draws thousands of people to Parcel 5 each Fringe season. Rochester Fringe is one of the only Fringe Festivals in the country that offers such spectacular, large-scale, free public programming. Unique Fringe programming supports a range of artists from local favorites to new and emerging talents. With another completely free, public art performance, Fringe presents TRACES, which is part of the U.S. premiere tour from the internationally acclaimed Théâtre de L'Entrouvert. TRACES will feature 25 people from Rochester of different ages, cultures and backgrounds. They are not actors, just people who will represent a cross section of the city, led by world renowned French ice artist and puppeteer Elise Vigneron. Her work with ice has been featured in performances from the Seoul Performing Art Festival to the World Festival of Puppet Theatres in Charleville-Mézières, France, Mime London Festival in London, and the Chicago Puppet Festival. TRACES is a spellbinding public conversation of sculpture, sound, and movement used to tell a unique story of the beauty and pain in our individual journeys and collective humanity. In TRACES, Vigneron will bring a poetic sensibility to the interdependence of humans with one another and the environment. TRACES will be performed during the first weekend of the festival and is made possible by funding from Villa Albertine, The French Institute for Culture and Education. 'Villa Albertine is honored to support TRACES, through its 2025 Theatre & New Forms program. It is our hope that nurturing collaboration between artists in France and the U.S. will contribute to the robust creative dialogue that has nourished both nations for decades,' said Mohamed Bouabdallah, Cultural Counselor of France and Director of Villa Albertine. New (World Premiere) Premieres and debuts are anticipated each year at Fringe. This year, Las Vegas legends and Fringe favorites Matt and Heidi Morgan, are back with a world premiere of Cirque du Fringe: Claws Out. It is glamorous, dazzling, unforgettable–-and that's just the cats! Audiences are invited to become fully immersed in an evening with beloved socialite and renowned opera singer Madam Kitty Ross. She is a purrfect host and the cattiest cat lady at Fringe. Will it be an evening to remember or turn out to be a real 'catastrophe?' It is not to be missed. All the cool cats will be there—glamorous aerialists, mind-blowing acrobats, and a swashbuckling swordsman—from America's Got Talent, Das Supertalent, Penn & Teller Fool Us, Spiegelworld's Absinthe, Opium & Vegas Nocturne, Circus Roncali and NBA halftime shows. But be careful, with a cast of characters as dramatic as these, the claws are sure to come out. Cocktails will be served in the Spiegeltent…shaken, not purred. Immersive Immersive experiences are cornerstone to the Fringe experience. Submergence provides a large, immersive sight and sound experience that is outdoors and walkable. It uses many thousands of individual points of suspended light to create feelings of presence and movement within physical space. In its entirety, the 12-minute piece forms an abstract narrative with a gradual increase in tension, building to a final climax. Each movement has its own elements, atmosphere and responsiveness. They are also all open to one's own interpretation. Submergence has been shown in over 70 spaces and events on six continents. It was created by Squidsoup, who are artist pioneers in the use of light, sound and technology to create immersive installations and encourage people to view the world from different perspectives. More Festival Highlights When it comes to Fringe, there is always more to see, hear and feel. Fringe is bringing back past favorites—Silent Disco, Bushwhacked, Dashboard Dramas and Pedestrian Drive-In—in the Spiegelgarden, which is a pop-up, urban lounge at One Fringe Place on Main and Gibbs and is the hub of the festival. Other new highlights include Les Kif Kif: Jam Side Up and Les Kif Kif: Returns Department, which feature twin sisters from Quebec who have a zany flair for comedy, gymnastics, puppetry, magic and…french-fries. Drag Me Home features, for the first-time ever under one Rochester roof, three of the city's favorite drag queens—Mrs. Kasha Davis, Darienne Lake and Pandora Boxx, all of which performed on RuPaul's Drag Race. Shotspeare is back with an all-new adaptation of Titus Andronicus, which takes the world's most beloved playwright, soaks him in beer, and flips him on his head. Then in The Event, which was honored with a Fringe First Award at Edinburgh Fringe and Best Actor Award at Adelaide Fringe, audiences watch as a man stands on stage in a pool of light and attempts the ultimate trick: disappearing while remaining in full sight. Family-Favorites Fringe offers programming for people of all ages, including families and children. Some family-favorite annual events, include Kids Day Saturday, September 20 with chalk art, pumpkin painting and Disco Kids; Street Beat regional hip-hop dance competition at MLK Park on Saturday, September 20 from 12:30 – 5pm, and Gospel Sunday on Sunday, September 14 in the Spiegeltent. A quarter of the Fringe's more than 250 shows and 650 performances are completely free. Additionally, Fringe has partnered with the Mary Cariola Center and Center for Disability Rights to have all Fringe venues assessed for accessibility and inclusion. Go Big! The reason Fringe is such an expansive and successful festival is due to the hard work and dedication of the more than 30 venue partners who curate and host shows at their locations in their traditional and nontraditional spaces every year. The Fringe in Rochester is unique due to our bi-furcated system—or Rochester Model—where both the Fringe organization and local venues curate shows for the festival and are complemented by large-scale, public performances. This results in a highly collaborative and unique mix of performances, where the shows are as unique as the venues themselves. This year, venue shows include world-class musicians, renowned dancers and documentarians, alongside emerging, exquisite, exciting, quirky, new talents. Audiences are in store for everything from dinner theater to even wrestling at Fringe! 2025 venues include: Aerial Arts of Rochester, Austin Steward Plaza, Bop Shop Records, Central Library of Rochester, Dawn's Spiegelgarden, Eastman School of Music, The Focus Theater, Garth Fagan Dance, Genesee Valley Sports Complex, George Eastman Museum, The Harley School, Java's JCC, Joseph Ave Arts and Culture Alliance, La Marketa at the International Plaza, Memorial Art Gallery, MuCCC, Parcel 5, Photo City Music Hall, RIT City Arts Space, RMSC Garden of Fragrance, ROC Cinema, ROC City Circus, Rochester Music Hall of Fame, RoCo, The Rose Room, Salena's, School of the Arts, Spiegeltent, Strangebird Brewery, The Hochstein School, The Little, The Spirit Room, UR Sloan Performing Arts Center, Washington Grove, Washington Square, Writers & Books, and St. Joseph's Park. All of this and so much more will again make the Fringe the event of the year–including the previously announced comedy headliner Chelsea Handler, performing on Saturday, September 13 at 8pm, at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. The full 2025 Rochester Fringe Festival program can be found at where tickets are also available for all events. The printed festival guide will be available in mid-August at all ESL branch locations, as well as in the September issue of CITY Magazine. People can also build their Fringe schedules and purchase tickets with the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival App ( Apple App Store or Google Play Store ). Future of Fringe To ensure the future and stability of Fringe in Rochester, today the organization also announced that it is undergoing a Fringe Comprehensive Campaign to raise $1.575 million. The campaign committee reports that it has already secured $1.1 million in donations to date, and hopes to meet its goal by year end. At the heart of this endeavor is a capital element – the acquisition of a rare Spiegeltent. Now, the Fringe will have one of the world's most unique performing arts venues, avoiding operating costs and creating new revenue streams through rental opportunities. To purchase naming opportunities for Spiegeltent booths, mirrors or floorboards, visit Funds raised during this effort will also be used to support international and domestic artists in bringing their shows to Fringe, as well as provide arts education and built-in reserves so that we can continue to deliver outstanding programming for years to come. Website | Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok | #rocfringe25 ABOUT THE ESL ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL: The 12-day ESL Rochester Fringe Festival, one of the nation's largest fringe festivals, has also been recognized by the New York Times as 'one of the country's more prominent multidisciplinary events' and is the current winner of CITY Magazine's Best of Rochester Award for Best Arts Event. Nearly a million people have attended more than 5,700 performances and events at the Fringe since its inception in 2012. The non-profit organization's mission is to offer platforms for artists, new audiences for venues, and unparalleled public access to incredible art. It strives to be diverse and inclusive, as well as to stimulate downtown Rochester culturally and economically. The Fringe showcases the work of regional, national, and international artists from emerging to superstar. ABOUT ESL: With more than 100 years of locally owned history, ESL Federal Credit Union serves as a full-service financial institution to more than 438,000 members and 17,200 businesses. Founded in 1920, the company provides personal banking, business banking, mortgage services and wealth management services through its locally based 24-branch network; telephone, mobile and online banking; and live chat center. The Rochester-based financial institution employs approximately 950 people in the Greater Rochester area and holds more than $9.4 billion in assets. Since 1996, ESL has paid out 30 consecutive Owners' Dividends to its members totaling more than $320 million. Since the creation of its Community Impact initiative in 2018, ESL has reinvested more than $153 million in grants throughout the community. The company has appeared on Great Place to Work® lists since 2010. ESL Federal Credit Union is headquartered at 225 Chestnut Street, in Rochester, and can be found online at ESL ROCHESTER FRINGE SPONSORS: ESL Federal Credit Union, New York State Council on the Arts; Rochester Area Community Foundation; City of Rochester; University of Rochester; Monroe County; Dr. Dawn F. Lipson; 7Crest; Ames Amzalak Memorial Trust; Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation; Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; ESL Charitable Foundation; Waldron Rise Foundation; Elaine P. and Richard U. Wilson Foundation; Louis S. and Molly B. Wolk Foundation; Konar Enterprises; The Rubens Family Foundation; Mary Mulligan Trust; The Pike Company; Lake Beverage; Garber Automotive Rochester; The Inn on Broadway; Finger Lakes Distilling; Visit Rochester; Nazareth University; St. John Fisher University; Monroe Community College; 13WHAM TV; CITY Magazine; D&C Digital; WXXI; Albertine; J.M. McDonald Foundation; Hyatt Regency Rochester; The Harley School; The Spindler Family Foundation; Aspire Transformation Services; Hamilton A/V; Wilkins RV; McCarthy Tents & Events; City Blue Imaging; France Institute (Institut Francais); Villa Albertine; Quebec; Wegmans; Canandaigua National Bank; Broccolo Tree & Lawn Care; Yelp!; AdHouse Productions; the House of Guitars; Bond Schoeneck & King; A-Verdi; Kids Out and About and the Mary Cariola Center. ABOUT FRINGE FESTIVALS: In 1947, eight theatre groups showed up - uninvited - to perform at the newly established Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. Although not listed in the official program, the groups performed anyway, at venues they found for themselves. The following year, a Scottish journalist coined the term 'festival fringe' to describe these non-curated shows that began turning up annually. The Edinburgh Fringe is now the world's largest arts festival and the third largest event after the Olympics and the World Cup. Today, there are more than 250 Fringe Festivals worldwide, with nearly 50 in the United States. The ESL Rochester Fringe Festival was the first in Upstate New York. Image & Online Press Kit More information and high-res image can be found online: Press - Rochester Fringe Festival. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Rochester Fringe Festival, Inc.

Fast Five Quiz: Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy Management
Fast Five Quiz: Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy Management

Medscape

time02-07-2025

  • Health
  • Medscape

Fast Five Quiz: Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy Management

Transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) is a type of systemic amyloidosis that causes restrictive cardiomyopathy and can affect the peripheral and autonomic nervous systems. After diagnosis, patients should be referred to consultation with cardiologists as well as other specialists to develop a treatment plan based on their symptoms. Because this condition can affect several different organ systems, disease management requires a multidisciplinary approach. Are you up to date on your understanding of ATTR-CM management ? Test your knowledge with this quick quiz. ATTRwt, the more common type of ATTR-CM, usually occurs as a function of age, whereas hATTR usually occurs as a result of TTR mutations. Several siRNA agents and ASOs are available to treat polyneuropathy associated with either type. Liver transplantation, which removes mutant TTR from the blood, has been used to treat hATTR, but the development of newer medications has reduced the need for transplant. Patients with ATTR-CM should be treated with interventions that address all their symptoms, including heart failure, arrhythmias, conduction system disorders, and extracardiac manifestations. Learn more about treatment considerations for hATTR and ATTR-CM. Volume management is an essential element of cardiac amyloidosis treatment, especially if heart failure symptoms are present. In patients with ATTR-CM and heart failure symptoms, loop diuretics are used to maintain euvolemia. Because diuretics can reduce preload, blood pressure should be carefully monitored to prevent adverse effects on renal perfusion and cardiac output. Renin-angiotensin system inhibitors can exert vasodilative effects and have been shown to cause hypertension in this setting. Beta-adrenoceptor blockers have been shown to exert negative chronotropic effects and can worsen symptoms of heart failure Cardiac glycosides, such as digoxin, are usually not recommended in patients with ATTR-CM. Learn more about treating cardiac involvement in ATTR-CM. Transthyretin stabilizers, including tafamidis, vutrisiran, and acoramidis, are approved to treat cardiomyopathy in both hATTR and ATTR-CM in adults. They work to reduce cardiovascular mortality and cardiovascular-related hospitalization. However, they have not been shown to reverse existing damage. Clinical trials have demonstrated that this medication class significantly reduced all-cause mortality and lowered hospitalization rates in addition to slowing disease progression. This medication class was also generally well tolerated in most patients with minor side effects, including urinary tract infection. Clinical data also showed that starting this medication class earlier in the disease course might provide improved long-term outcomes. Learn more about transthyretin stabilizers for ATTR-CM. OH is defined as a reduction of ≥ 20 mm Hg in systolic blood pressure or 10 mm Hg in diastolic blood pressure within 3 minutes of standing or upright tilt; further, it is a common complication of ATTR-CM. Nonpharmacologic management of OH can include compression stockings (which can produce ≥ 15-20 mm Hg of pressure) and elastic abdominal binders. Reduced fluid intake has been shown to worsen OH but specifics regarding intake amount in the setting of ATTR-CM can be individualized according to the patient. Though magnesium supplementation has been shown to help manage blood pressure in certain cases, there is limited evidence regarding its role in the treatment of OH associated with ATTR-CM. Evidence regarding vitamin D supplementation in this setting is also limited. Learn more about managing different conditions associated with ATTR-CM. siRNAs and ASOs, considered to be TTR ' silencers,'work in similar ways to 'knock down' the production of TTR in the liver. Their mechanism of action involves targeting TTR mRNA for degradation. This prevents it from being translated, reducing the amount of TTR protein in circulation and disables retinol (vitamin A) transport. TTR stabilizers bind thyroxine 4 into one of two transthoracic echocardiography interdimeric binding pockets. This prevents dissociation into amyloidogenic TTR monomers and oligomers, thereby increasing the stability of the tetramer. Learn more about how different medications treat ATTR-CM. Editor's Note: This article was created using several editorial tools, including generative AI models, as part of the process. Human review and editing of this content were performed prior to publication.

At YSP William Kentridge Asks What We Can Trust in Image and Memory
At YSP William Kentridge Asks What We Can Trust in Image and Memory

Forbes

time01-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Forbes

At YSP William Kentridge Asks What We Can Trust in Image and Memory

William Kentridge in his studio with Laocoön, Johannesburg, 2021 Stella Olivier for William Kentridge William Kentridge works with drawing, sculpture, tapestry, film, theatre, opera, and writing—exploring all manner of material, from paper to clay to bronze. His creations move and migrate between media and criss-cross time lucidly. And his multidisciplinary practice has left a distinct mark on contemporary visual culture, reshaping how we think about image, memory, time. A native of Johannesburg, and the son of prominent anti-apartheid lawyers (his father represented Nelson Mandela), Kentridge's practice is inevitably entangled in the socio-political history of South Africa and the wider world. Yet he rejects the idea of offering fixed truths. Instead, his work constantly questions the grand narratives of history, politics, science, literature, and music—opening up spaces that interrogate the legacies of colonialism and power, and invite multiple ways of seeing. William Kentridge, Cursive, 2020 Thys Dullaart for William Kentridge 'William Kentridge: The Pull of Gravity' dips into the artist's visionary world. Staged across the indoor gallery and the lawns of Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the north of England, the exhibition features 40 works made between 2007 and 2024. They join a distinguished lineup of sculptures in the park's landscape, including works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink, and James Turrell. This is the first museum presentation for Kentridge outside South Africa to focus on his sculptures. He says, 'I never thought of myself as a sculptor, but I had worked a lot with shadows in performance and in drawings and I was interested in the possibility of making something like a shadow—so ephemeral and without any substance—to be solid.' William Kentridge's Paper Procession (Palermo Cash Book) I (2023) is part of a series of hand‑torn paper cutout miniature silhouettes which inspired the new commissions Thys Dullaart for William Kentridge At the heart of the exhibition is 'Paper Procession', a new YSP commission featuring six monumental, brightly colored sculptures that appear to be paper thin but are in fact made from painted aluminium panels fixed to steel armatures. They parade human-like outdoors along a century-old yew hedge and are joined in the main YSP park by four of the artist's largest bronzes. The idea for the new commissions 'derived from anxiety,' he tells me. 'I had to find something for this place and it happened innocently.' Like much of his work, the sculptures evolved intuitively—from flat paper puppets to freestanding forms to these towering outdoor figures. One of William Kentridge's Paper Procession works at Yorkshire Sculpture Park Nargess Banks The central YSP gallery features two major video works shown in rotation. 'More Sweetly Play the Dance' (2015) is a hauntingly moving and strangely beautiful silhouetted procession of figures—a brass band, skeletons, refugees—referencing displacement, disease and endurance. 'Oh To Believe in Another World' (2022) takes an even darker, more politically charged turn. Set to Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No.10 (a work long associated with the composer's fraught relationship with Stalin) the film interrogates the tension between artistic freedom and totalitarian control. In the past, Kentridge has spoken of art's role in giving a sense of agency in the world—for the maker and the viewer. Here music becomes a lens for thinking about the artist as witness, as resister, as someone navigating between public history and private reckoning. William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015) at LUMA Foundation, Arles Victor & Simon, Joana Luz for William Kentridge YSP brings in visitors from all walks of life who come for the art, the beautiful walks and scenery, and for a day out. It also attracts large numbers of school children from nearby cities, many of whom may not have been exposed to art, and certainly not contemporary art. I ask Kentridge how it feels to be exhibiting here. 'With these sculptures its not like looking at an old master, where we think there's no possible way I could imagine making this. With my sculptures you can see very clearly how things are constructed, how they're put together. And visitors may think: I too can also be an artist.' William Kentridge, Oh To Believe In Another World (2022), at LUMA Foundation, Arles Vicor & Simon, Joana Luz for William Kentridge 'The Pull of Gravity' is a thoughtful show, with a curatorial approach that highlights Kentridge's constant movement across disciplines. He is also a committed collaborator, and you sense that at YSP—just as you sense the movement of ideas from one exhibition space to the next—often sparked, he says, by a studio member's particular talent or a material's own response to form. Kentridge speaks of provisional coherence as the concept central to his practice: that meaning, form, even understanding are never fixed and certainly never absolute. Coherence, for him, emerges through process, through these layers and fragments that come together for a moment, only to shift again. It's a kind of order that remains open to change, to revision, and is always shaped by its context. William Kentridge, Still from Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot, 2022 Kentridge Studio, William Kentridge To my mind, be it in two or three dimensions, Kentridge's work is always collage. This is how he sees the world, and it is fundamental to how he would like us to view the world since collage requires us to understand the world as fragmented. And it is precisely this that makes Kentridge's work so exciting and so right for our black-and-white, left-or-right, painfully polarizing times. 'Things that seem so clear are clear for a moment,' he tells me when I probe him on the concept, 'and then the clarity disappears and you have to find a different kind of clarity.' This is work that adamantly refuses to instruct or be didactic. Instead, it gestures toward hope, brimming with poeticism, beauty and metaphor. William Kentridge, Untitled VI (Nose on Horse, Napoleon), 2007 William Kentridge As an artist in constant engagement with societal concerns, I ask if he has hope in a world that, for many of us, feels increasingly dark and difficult to digest. His face grows serious as he tells me, 'I have both hope and pessimism—both running together. I think to have only one or the other is to blind yourself to part of the world.' It is this holding of contradictions—beauty and brutality, doubt and belief—that makes Kentridge's work resonate so widely. 'I'm interested in moments of clarity,' he says, 'but ones that don't pretend to last.' And the YSL show invites us to sit inside uncertainty, and to think, to feel, and to keep looking. 'William Kentridge: The Pull of Gravity' is at Yorkshire Sculpture Park from June 28, 2025 to April 19, 2026. For more on art and design, follow my reviews here .

Urban design job listings are up 102%. This might be why
Urban design job listings are up 102%. This might be why

Fast Company

time30-06-2025

  • Business
  • Fast Company

Urban design job listings are up 102%. This might be why

Fast Compan y's new analysis of job listings across several design disciplines puts a number on it: job postings for urban designers are up 102% compared to the previous year. This boom may reflect the increasing relevance of the kind of work urban designers do, which is to create functioning communities and regions. Spanning architecture, city planning, landscape architecture, and urban development, urban design takes in the whole picture of a city and looks for ways that interventions at all scales can improve the system. 'It's really a field of integration,' says Tyler Patrick, chair of the planning and urban design department at Sasaki, a large multidisciplinary design firm. Patrick says that Sasaki has been hiring more and more urban designers every year, and including their input on nearly every project. 'It's a field that continues to add a lot of value.'

That mystery brain disease plaguing people in New Brunswick? A new study finds it's not real
That mystery brain disease plaguing people in New Brunswick? A new study finds it's not real

National Post

time07-05-2025

  • Health
  • National Post

That mystery brain disease plaguing people in New Brunswick? A new study finds it's not real

Article content 'Complex neurological disorders benefit from a second, independent and/or subspecialist evaluation and require multidisciplinary support throughout the diagnostic journey,' said the study that collected data between November 2023 and this past March. Article content 'Clinical and neuropathological evaluations demonstrated that all 25 cases were attributable to well characterized neurological disorders,' it said. 'The final primary diagnoses, and in some cases secondary diagnoses, included Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, other neurodegenerative conditions, functional neurological disorder, traumatic brain injury or persisting post concussion symptoms, and others.' Article content The independent assessment of 25 patients 'provides no support for an undiagnosed mystery disease in New Brunswick,' said the study. Article content 'The gold standard, neuropathological assessments with second, blinded independent evaluations, revealed well-defined diagnoses for 11 deceased patients.' Article content When all 25 cases were included in the mix, '100 per cent of patients in this sample did not have a new disease and with 95 per cent confidence, the probability of no new disease is between 87 per cent and 100 per cent,' said the study. Article content 'The lower bound of 87 per cent reflects a conservative estimate based on the data and statistical methods accounting for uncertainty in the sample, including the possibility of diagnostic error or unmeasured variability. However, practical knowledge and clinical reasoning suggest that the actual probability of no new disease is much closer to the upper bound of 100 per cent.' Article content The new study said 'it is crucial to highlight the factors that fuel persistent public concern of a mystery disease despite the provincial investigation rejecting this possibility. Public trust in health institutions has decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic, while trust in individual healthcare professionals remains high, which can make vulnerable people susceptible to claims that the institutional oversight processes are flawed, especially if originating from trusted physicians.' Article content The new research comes with a caution. Article content Misinformation regarding the New Brunswick 'cluster has proliferated in both traditional and social media, from not only the predictable and easily identifiable groups coopting the crisis to suit their agenda, such as antivaccine advocates, but also those who are unknowingly amplifying an incorrect diagnosis from their physician,' said the study. Article content 'In this way, misdiagnosis and misinformation become inextricably entwined and amplify patient harm exponentially: to the best of our knowledge, only 14 patients sought independent reevaluation by another neurologist when offered, and 52 refused a second opinion, choosing instead to remain with the one neurologist who originally made and continues to promote the diagnosis of a mystery disease. Not only do our data indicate that affected patients likely have other diagnosable neurological conditions that could benefit from multidisciplinary treatment and other resources, but the low uptake also impedes the rigorous scientific evaluations necessary to counter the claims raised in the first place.' Article content

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