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Reuters Health
NEW
YORK - There is no evidence to date of the presence of new
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD)--the human version
of "mad cow'' disease--in the United States, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news
- web sites) (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.
Then
again, "this is one world. People have traveled to
the United Kingdom.... We are not 100% sure that a case
of (nvCJD) will not arise in the future,'' CDC researcher
Dr. Lawrence B. Schonberger told Reuters Health in an interview.
The
CDC analyzed data concerning all cases of CJD that were
diagnosed between 1979 and 1998 in the United States. During
that time there were 4,751 deaths due to the disease, according
to the report published in the November 8th issue of The
Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web
sites).
This
particular strain found in the US is an older strain of
CJD and is not transmitted by eating beef as is suspected
in the 'variant' CJD form that emerged in Britain in the
1990s.
"Although
these illness have the same name, they are different diseases,''
Schonberger explained.
One
difference that the CDC report identifies is that the average
age of those infected in the US is 68 years, while in the
UK the average age of infection is 27 years. And autopsies
of the brains of those who have died reveal different types
of lesions, suggesting a different mode of action between
the two illnesses.
Both
forms of CJD result in the formation of plaques that build
up in the brain, resulting in loss of brain function and
death. While the disease is not transmittable like a cold
virus or a sexually transmitted disease, the US has asked
people who spent more than 6 months in the United Kingdom
between 1980 and 1996 to refrain from donating blood, Schonberger
noted.
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