Woman cured of vCJD: report

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Woman cured of vCJD: report

 

From AFP

12aug01

 

A BRITISH woman suffering from the normally fatal brain-wasting variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) has made an astonishing recovery after

becoming the world's first human guinea pig in a new drug trial, the British

press reports has reported.

 

Rachel Forber, 20, who was diagnosed with the disease in June, was given a

year to live.

 

According to the Mail on Sunday, the previously fit and healthy young woman

lost the ability to walk, talk coherently or feed herself after being struck

down by the illness.

 

Unwilling to see his daughter die, Forber's father Stephen contacted

Professor Stanley Prusiner, a Nobel Prize winner honoured for his work in

identifying the prion - an infectious protein - which causes bovine

spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and the related vCJD in humans.

 

Following treatment from the professor's team in California, Forber has

undergone an extraordinary transformation and can now walk unaided and talk,

the newspaper said.

 

There have been 106 victims of variant CJD since 1996, of whom seven are

still alive, but Professor Prusiner's team insists it is too early to speak

of a cure.

 

The Department of Health confirmed that the preliminary results of the drug

trial, due to be made public in a scientific journal this week, were

" encouraging " .

 

However, a government spokesman told the newspaper: " Until the work is

published and we have a chance to look at it properly, we cannot comment

properly.

 

" I think it is a bit early to say it is a miracle. " But for Forber's father,

nothing short of a miracle has occurred.

 

" It is as if Rachel has been plucked from living hell and brought back into

the real world when the only future for her was a terrible, dreadful death.

 

" Rachel has been cured of this, of that there is no doubt in my mind, "

Forber told The Mail on Sunday.