Mum dies from rare dementia years after catching it from own baby while pregnant

In a shocking medical case, a woman died from a rare form of dementia decades after allegedly catching the disease from her own baby while pregnant.

While, the woman’s husband died of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease two decades ago, her own genes were previously shown to be clear of the responsible mutation.

However, the unidentified woman, from Denmark, died of the same crippling disease as her late husband while in her seventies.

Her son, whose identity has also been withheld but is known to be 53 and a father himself, is now 'showing symptoms' of sporadic CJD.

Doctors believe the son inherited mutated gene responsible for disease from his father, before passing it back to his mother while in the womb.

Cells from the foetus that contained the toxic proteins are thought to have traveled across the placenta into her bloodstream, before lodging in her brain.

The fatal condition causes irreversible brain damage, triggered by abnormal proteins known as prions, which gradually destroy brain cells.

The rare case was uncovered by a team of medics at the Danish Reference Centre for Prion Diseases in Copenhagen University Hospital.

The woman was diagnosed with sporadic CJD before the disorder was linked to her late husband or son.