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Briton from houston has mad cow disease

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   http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/3476565.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/3476565.html

Nov. 21, 2005, 8:01PM
Briton who lived in Houston has mad cow disease

Associated Press

HOUSTON — A man from Great Britain who lived in Houston for four years has been diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed today.

The 30-year-old man was diagnosed with the second U.S. case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because his symptoms began while he lived in Houston.

Earlier this year, he returned to Great Britain, where his disease progressed and he is now receiving medical treatment for the fatal illness.

The U.K. National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland, informed the Atlanta-based CDC of the probable variant CJD diagnosis and told the disease center the case would need to be reported as a U.S. case.

The man was born in the United Kingdom and lived there from 1980-1996, a period during which those living in the country were at risk of exposure to beef products infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more commonly known as mad cow disease.

The infected man's temporary stay in the U.S. has been deemed "too brief relative to what is known about the incubation period for variant CJD," the CDC said. It is believed he was infected in the United Kingdom because the disease's incubation period can last years, sometimes decades.

"He lived in the United Kingdom for the whole time they had a problem," Lawrence B. Schonberger, a CDC medical epidemiologist, said of the man. "Almost certainly, this case represents a continuation of the outbreak that is going on in the United Kingdom and it is just by convention that he happened to have gotten sick here."

The variant disease, which is contracted by eating the brain or other nervous system tissue of an animal infected with BSE, first was discovered in 1996 in the United Kingdom. It typically ends in death within a few years of diagnosis. The median length of the illness is 14 months and age of death for those diagnosed is 28, according to the CDC.

"It re-emphasizes the need for us to be strong in terms of controlling this Mad Cow disease from all over the world. People need to take it seriously," Schonberger said. "It's a bad disease."

The infected man was not hospitalized while living in Houston and had not undergone any invasive medical procedures or received donated blood, the CDC said.

A total of 185 people from 11 countries have been diagnosed with variant CJD since 1996. A majority of the cases — 158 — have been diagnosed in Great Britain, 15 in France, three in Ireland and two in the United States. Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Spain have each also reported a case.

The initial U.S. case involved a woman from Great Britain who was living in Florida. She died last year, Schonberger said.

"They have been having cases in the United Kingdom on a regular basis," he said. "From our perspective, this is just the continuation of the ongoing outbreak in the United Kingdom."

Texas Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Beverly Boyd said the state was informed of the case this morning.

"This is not a safety issue for Texas," she said. "We have taken all the necessary steps possible to prevent any exposure in the United States and we have a very safe beef supply in Texas and in America."

CDC spokesman David Daigle said there is no connection between the Great Britain man's diagnosis with variant CJD and the presence of BSE found in a Texas cow earlier this year.

The animal, which died in April on the farm where it lived, did not enter the human food or animal feed supply.

The confirmed infection of the 12-year-old Brahma-cross beef cow born in Texas was the first time a native-born case of brain wasting disease was discovered in the U.S.



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