Medical mystery solved in slaughterhouse

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Medical mystery solved in slaughterhouse

 

Story Highlights

A woman in Minnesota is suddenly hit with a strange illness

 

Interpreter at a hospital notices similarities in workers at a

slaughterhouse

 

Investigators focus attention on part of plant where pig brain tissue

processed

 

The manner of removing pig brains is found to be making workers sick

 

From A. Chris Gajilan

CNN

updated 3:37 p.m. EST

Thu February 28, 2008

 

AUSTIN, Minnesota (CNN) -- A mysterious nerve disorder that hit some

slaughterhouse employees with debilitating symptoms apparently was

caused by inhaling a fine mist of pig brain tissue.

 

While eating pig brains isn't dangerous, inhaling fumes from

particles of pig brain matter can be, scientists say.

 

A translator assisting Spanish-speaking patients helped to expose the

hidden risk, which prompted the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention to name a new disease and led to changes in how pig brains

are harvested.

 

Susan Kruse is one of the patients who suffered from the disease

that's called progressive inflammatory neuropathy, or PIN.

 

Her quest for health started with bizarre, unexplainable symptoms and

took her to nearly 20 doctors.

 

For more than 15 years, the 37-year-old mother worked a regular shift

at Quality Pork Processors in Austin, Minnesota. In her spare time,

she renovated her home with her boyfriend, son and stepdaughter.

 

In November 2006, the symptoms began. First, there were charley horse

cramps in her left calf that wouldn't go away. Within days, the

debilitating aches moved to her right leg. Within weeks, the tips of

her fingers began to go numb.

 

Soon, the pins and needles spread to her feet.

 

She couldn't figure out what was happening to her body. She wasn't

doing anything differently. She hadn't had any major health problems

in the past.

 

Kruse went to local doctors, but they had never seen anything quite

like it.

 

" I was very scared, " she said.

 

She underwent countless tests and saw almost 20 doctors, but all the

diagnoses were hazy -- everything from depression to gallstones.

 

By February 2007, Kruse could no longer stand for long periods. She

had to give up her job at a pork processing plant.

 

" The doctors couldn't believe how fast it came on. In a four-month

period I went from being able to walk to not being able to walk, "

Kruse said. " I'm only in my middle 30s -- who needs to be in a

wheelchair in the middle 30s? "

 

While Kruse continued to struggle with her illness, something strange

was unfolding a few blocks from her home.

 

At Austin Medical Center, a language interpreter began to notice a

pattern.

 

Over the course of 2007, she found herself translating a similar list

of ailments from Spanish-speaking patients to doctors.

 

She heard the same complaints over and over: aching leg pain; an odd

numbness and tingling in the hands, legs and sometimes face;

weakness; tiredness.

 

" There was a group of patients seeing different doctors that all

seemed to have a similar set of complaints, " said Dr. Daniel

Lachance, a neurologist.

 

At the time, Lachance worked at the Austin Medical Center and the

Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He asked Austin doctors to try to refer all

the similar cases to him.

 

By late 2007, his team tracked down 12 people, including Kruse, with

similar stories.

 

" These individuals, one, had a common pattern of illness, but also

they had something else in common, " Lachance said. " They all appeared

to work in the same place, which is Quality Pork Processors in

Austin. "

 

But the similarities didn't end there.

 

" When we looked a little further, it seemed that these workers were

clustered in a particular part of the plant, " according to Dr. Ruth

Lynfield, a leading epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of

Health.

 

Lynfield surveyed the plant with QPP President Kelly Wadding. They

focused on a section of the plant called the " head table, " the area

where brain tissue was harvested and packaged for export.

 

The market for pig brain tissue includes the American South, where

it's used in dishes such as brains and eggs. It's also sold in some

Asian countries, such as Cambodia and China, for various recipes,

including stir-fries and stews. The brain tissue processed at QPP was

used mainly for export to Asia.

 

State and federal health authorities have said eating pork brains is

safe. It's the harvesting method, called " blowing brains, " that posed

the health risk.

 

In the procedure, high blasts of compressed air were shot into the

head cavity to remove the brains. Sometimes the liquid combined with

brain tissue and turned into a mist.

 

Health investigators said droplets of the mist could have entered a

worker's system through the mucous membranes in the nose or mouth.

Once in the body, the foreign pig brain matter prompted the immune

system to produce antibodies to attack it, in a process similar to an

allergic reaction.

 

But the foreign matter seems to have also triggered an attack on the

body's nerve tissue, killing some of the nerves and causing the

mysterious numbness.

 

On January 31, the CDC gave a new name to the unique constellation of

ailments: progressive inflammatory neuropathy, or PIN.

 

" The pattern of abnormalities falls into a combination that we really

have not seen with other illnesses, " Lachance said.

 

He is helping to investigate whether PIN cases went unreported or

undetected before late 2006.

 

The CDC also is tracking two other plants that used the procedure. At

one plant in Indiana, there have been three confirmed cases. There

have been no cases confirmed at a Nebraska plant.

 

Pig brains are no longer harvested with compressed air. Health

authorities have said swift action by QPP management were key to

containing the outbreak.

 

Wadding, who has been QPP president since 1997, said, " Since we put

in some precautionary measures and stopped harvesting brains, we have

not had any new cases. "

 

To date, no one has died and most patients have recovered and

returned to work.

 

Kruse remains unable to work, but she said she has felt some relief

with immunotherapy treatments and medications.

 

While health authorities are convinced the outbreak is contained,

they said it will take months, perhaps years, to understand fully

what caused or triggered the illness in workers.

 

A. Chris Gajilan is a senior producer with CNN Medical News.

 

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