A rare or infrequent disease is one that affects a small absolute number of people or a small proportion of the population. To be considered rare, each specific disease can only affect a limited number of people (less than 5 in 10,000 inhabitants).
As its definition indicates, precisely this lack of frequency makes it difficult in many cases to find other people who share this experience, which makes it very difficult to give visibility to these diseases of which we know so little.
However, once we start to investigate, we can discover that who you least expect may be one of those affected by any of these diseases. So much so that there are several famous people from all guilds who suffer from rare diseases.
One of the most talked about cases lately in our country is Jordi Évole, who confessed to suffering Cataplexia after repeatedly collapsing during a television show. This event has brought into focus a practically unknown disease that the presenter has suffered from for two years. “It is a disease that many people suffer and I would not like to frivolize, but I take the opportunity to say that this disease exists and is screwed up. But in my case it is not so much, it is a medium grade” he explained live on the television program.
Among the famous there are several examples: the American actor Brad Pitt has suffered for years prosopagnosia, a disease that is produced by a kind of disconnection between sight and the brain and that causes the inability to recognize people’s faces. He revealed it himself in an interview published in ‘Esquire’ in 2013, in which he mentioned that in his case it could have appeared because of drug use.
Another case is that of Angelina Jolie, (the already ex of Brad Pitt) who suffers Bell’s palsy, a disease that affects the muscles of the face. This disease causes the muscles of the face to weaken and paralyze and usually affects one side of the face, also preventing the eye from closing. Jolie believes she has started to suffer from her symptoms as a result of her divorce.
The presenter Juan y Medio and the actor Jon Hamm (‘Mad Men’) share one of these rare diseases: vitiligo. This disease causes white patches on the skin due to lack of pigmentation and, at the moment, there is no cure. What causes it is unknown, but stress is directly related.
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Another case is that of the queen of ‘reality shows’ Kim Kardashian, who in 2019 learned that he suffered lupus (after taking an antibody test in your program). Kardashian had previously revealed that for some time she suffered from various symptoms related to arthritis, one of the most common consequences of the disease.
According to the World Health Organization there are about 7,000 rare diseases that affect 7% of the world’s population. In Spain there are more than 3 million people with rare diseases.
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