Study Shows Long Term Danger of Mad Cow Disease

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http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_889.cfm

 

 

Study Shows Long Term Danger of Mad Cow Disease

 

* Study shows danger of mad cow disease

International Herald Tribune - France, Published: June 22, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/22/news/brain.php

 

LONDON People could be infected with the human form of mad cow disease

for more than 50 years without developing the illness, which means the

size of a potential epidemic may be underestimated, British scientists

said Friday. About 160 people have been diagnosed with variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Cases of the fatal disease have also been

reported in France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, Japan and

the United States.

 

Estimates have varied widely of how many people are likely to develop

the brain illness caused by eating meat products contaminated with

bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

 

It has been difficult to predict due to the long incubation period,

which scientists had thought could be up to 20 years.

 

But John Collinge, a professor at University College, London, and

researchers believe it could be longer and that an eventual epidemic

could be bigger.

 

There could be " substantial underestimations " in recent estimates of

the size of the vCJD epidemic, Collinge said in a report in The Lancet

medical journal.

 

The scientists' findings are based on a study of another human disease

called kuru, which like vCJD is caused by a mutated prion brain

protein. Kuru reached epidemic proportions in some parts of Papua New

Guinea where cannibalism had been practiced up to the 1950s in a

ritual where natives ate dead relatives as a mark of respect.

 

Collinge and his team calculated the minimum incubation period for

kuru based on when cannibalism was stopped and the year of birth of

the last recorded patient.

 

According to their calculations, the minimum incubation time ranged

from 34 to 41 years but in men rose to more than 50 years. They

suspect it could be longer for vCJD because the infection was

transmitted between species, from cows to humans, which usually takes

longer than within the same species.

 

They also identified a genetic variation in the kuru patients that was

linked with extended incubation and resistance to prion disease.

Patients already diagnosed with vCJD could represent a distinct

genetic subgroup of the population with an unusually short incubation

period, according to Collinge.

 

The Lancet described the study in an editorial as an innovative piece

of research. " Any belief that vCJD incidence has peaked and that we

are through the worst of this sinister disease must now be treated

with extreme skepticism, " it said.

 

Diagnosis in the Netherlands

 

A second Dutch person has been diagnosed with the human variant of mad

cow disease after a 26-year-old Dutch woman died from the disease last

year, Dutch health authorities said Thursday, Reuters reported from

Amsterdam. The Dutch Institute for Health and Environment said only

that the person probably got infected by eating contaminated meat

products. The Netherlands is a leading exporter of meat and dairy

products.