-Caveat Lector-
As if we didn't already know it, but here it is anyway. . .
Mad Cow, Brain Disease Said Linked
.c The Associated Press
BY PAUL RECER
WASHINGTON (AP) - A laboratory experiment gives powerful new evidence that an
infectious protein that causes mad cow disease also causes a new type of
fatal human brain disease that has killed 51 people in Europe.
The study, appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, makes clear that people in Britain who developed a new type of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease could have gotten it from eating meat from cattle
infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the so-called mad cow
disease. The brain disease has not been found in America.
Experts said the study also suggests the infectious protein, called prion,
that causes the diseases can move more easily between species more easily
than once believed.
``These findings argue unequivocally that BSE and the new variant CJD are the
same strain of prion,'' said Dr. Stephen DeArmond, a researcher at the
University of California, San Francisco, and a senior author of the study.
An outbreak of BSE occurred in British cattle early this decade. Later, some
people in Britain developed a new, more deadly type of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease. In 1996, experts suggested mad cow disease possibly could be linked
to the brain-wasting human disease.
The European Union banned import of British beef for three years until last
August. France still denies import of the meat. Officials in Britain banned
sale of bone-in domestic beef in 1997 and lifted the sanction last Thursday.
More than 175,000 British cattle died of BSE during the 1990s. At least 48
people in Britain have died of the new form of CJD, along with two in France
and one in Ireland. Neither disease has been detected in the United States.
Although a link between mad cow disease and the new type of CJD had been
suggested, there were experts who questioned the connection and contended a
true scientific link was lacking. The new San Francisco study virtually
removes doubt, said Dr. Donald Price, a neurological disease researcher at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
``This lends new credence to the idea that the new variant CJD is a direct
result of consuming products from animals with BSE,'' Price said Monday. ``It
is something the European community should be concerned about.''
Officials for the British health and agricultural departments in London
declined comment Monday, saying they have not yet read the new study.
Since the new form of CJD is thought to have an incubation period of at least
10 years, experts say it is impossible to know now how many people have been
infected.
Co-authors of the study include Dr. Stanley Prusinger, a UCSF professor who
won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his discovery that the protein prion caused BSE.
In the study, researchers created a strain of mice that had genes for the
normal form of bovine prion protein. The mice were inoculated with prions
taken from diseased cows.
After 250 days, the test mice all developed neurological disease.
In another group of the mice, the researchers injected priors taken from
patients who had the new form of CJD. After 250 days, these mice also
developed neurological disease.
Prions from the diseased mice were then injected into a third group of mice.
They also developed the disease.
DeArmond said the mice with the disease had identical symptoms and incubation
periods. Also, a microscopic examination of their brains found the same type
of lesions. In CJD, the brain is pocked with holes caused by the death of
cells.
Mice injected with scrapie, a sheep form of prion disease, got neurological
disease, but it was different from the infection linked to BSE, researchers
said.
BSE is thought to have developed in British cattle whose feed contained
protein from sheep that had been infected with scrapie. Britain now bans the
use of animal parts in cattle feed. In the United States, the FDA issued a
similar ban in 1997.
Prions, a name that stands for ``infectious particles,'' usually are normal
proteins found in most mammals. But when the prion shape is changed - either
from infection or from contact with another malformed prion - the particle
can cause brain disease.
Because it attacks the brain, symptoms can include bizarre behavior in
animals. For this reason, BSE is often called ``mad cow disease.
AP-NY-12-20-99 1614EST
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hitherto harmed us little; but someday
the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying
vistas of reality, and of our
frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation
or flee from the deadly light into the
peace and safety of a new dark age." H.P.Lovecraft; "The Call of Cthulhu"
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