The Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia
- Health authorities are testing the remains of a 74-year-old
Australian man said to have shown symptoms of the brain-wasting
illness linked to mad cow disease, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The man, who
was not identified, died March 30 after months of unusual behavior
that doctors told his family may have been symptoms of variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper said.
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease has killed about 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly
in Britain, but no Australian has tested positive for it.
People are
believed to contract the illness by eating meat products from
cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.
It usually manifests itself in humans in the form of depression.
The Telegraph
said the man had traveled to Britain and France in 1993 and had
eaten meat products during his six-week vacation.
The man's
widow, who did not wish to be identified, said he had acted "very
strangely" in the months before his death. "I thought
he was going mad, to be honest," she was quoted as saying.
The Telegraph
said doctors are conducting tests on the man's brain tissue, with
a diagnosis expected within a week.
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