Deaths from 'mad cow' disease variant quadruple
LONDON, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Deaths from a variant of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob
degenerative brain disease have quadrupled in five years in Britain, a new study
said Friday.
The number of people to die after eating beef infected with "mad cow" disease
rose from three in 1995 to 14 in the first six months this year, said the study
led by Professor Robert Will of the CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh,
Scotland.
Details of the study appeared in The Lancet medical journal and other news media
Friday.
Dr. Hester Ward of the Surveillance Unit wrote in the journal there was concern
over the increase in the incidence of vCJD, a variant of the human form of
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, which is contracted
by consumers of infected meat. BSE spread in British cattle in the 1990s,
decimating livestock, destroying tens of thousands of farming businesses and
hitting meat exports.
Britain slaughtered more than a million infected cattle but its meat exports
remain banned from many countries.
The degenerative disease cannot be treated and slowly destroys victims' brain
functions until they are paralyzed, brain damaged, unable to speak and in
constant pain.
The researchers analyzed data about vCJD infections and deaths, and talked to
relatives of patients to find out when symptoms of the disease first became
apparent.
Ward said, "Although absolute numbers remain low, there appears to be a real
increase in the incidence of vCJD in the UK, which is a cause for concern."
She said, "Until it is known whether this increasing trend is maintained over
time, it is difficult to predict future numbers of cases."
A CJD surveillance unit now logs all deaths from the disease, as well as living
cases thought to be vCJD suffers. But the disease cannot be diagnosed until
after death when a biopsy can be performed.
In mid-July, Britain launched a new investigation into an outbreak of CJD after
four deaths and a fifth case in Leicestershire were linked by health officials.
The four people who died between 1998 and May this year and the fifth person
were all infected with CJD. The latest victim, a 24-year-old man, was known to
be suffering from the new CJD variant, officials said.
Experts pointed to the village of Queniborough in Leicestershire as a possible
link between them. Glenn Day lived there and Stacey Robinson and Pamela Beyless
often visited. All three died in 1998. A 19-year-old man who died in May and a
24-year-old victim also came from the same part of Leicestershire.
It was the fifth diagnosis in the area that triggered the investigation,
officials said.
At that time, Health Minister Lord Hunt of Kings Heath sought to calm public
fears, saying the victims would have been exposed to the infective agent "many
years ago."
But both the CJD Surveillance Unit and London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine were alerted to the cases. In June, researchers at the University of
Ottawa said they could not rule out the risk of contracting CJD by blood
transfusion. The researchers examined five studies that reported varying but low
levels of the risk.
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