2 deaths in Spain linked to mad cow disease--authorities

RTE.net

'Mad cow' disease is found in goat

Friday, 28 January 2005 22:33

The first case of BSE or mad cow disease in animals other than cattle has been discovered after a French goat slaughtered in 2002 tested positive.

The disease was widespread in the 1990s all over Europe. However the number of cattle testing positive for the disease in Ireland in the past number of years has fallen dramatically.

The European Commission is to investigate if this latest incident is isolated.

RTE.net

First reported case of BSE in USA

Tuesday, 23 December 2003 22:53

The United States has reported its first suspected case of Mad Cow Disease or BSE in Washington state.

In a separate development, earlier the Department of Agriculture and Food published final results for the number of cattle deaths from Mad Cow Disease or BSE in 2003.

There was one death in the last week in Co Cavan, bringing the total number of confirmed cases for the year so far to 183.

That is a 43% reduction on last year, when there were 333 confirmed cases.

First reported case of BSE in USA

RTE.net

Total of BSE cases in 2004 rises to 121

Friday, 26 November 2004 15:07

There were seven cases of BSE during the past week, bringing the total so far this year to 121.

That compares with 170 for the same period last year and 313 in 2002.

However, the authorities are still trying to establish the age of one case discovered this week.

Department of Agriculture officials are examining the tag and the identity number of the animal involved, a cow in Kerry.

The other cases this week were in Wexford, Kerry, Westmeath, Kildare and two in Cavan. All of these animals were nine years or older.

Total of BSE cases in 2004 rises to 121

RTE.net

Cases of BSE continued to fall in 2006

Friday, 22 December 2006 22:14

Figures out this afternoon indicate that the incidence in Ireland of the cattle brain disease, BSE, continues to decline.

The Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, has welcomed the fall-off in the disease, which raised consumer concern about beef for several years and caused havoc to meat exports.

She said she is pleased that the underlying trend remains positive and that the Governments controls are proving effective.

During the 1990s and into this decade, BSE was a huge worry for farmers and consumers in Ireland.

This disease, which destroys brain and nerve system of cattle, first became widespread in Britain. But by the late 1980s it had arrived in Ireland.

Many counties immediately stopped taking our beef exports - which plunged agriculture here into crisis as 90% of our beef has to be sold abroad.

There were under 20 outbreaks a year until 1995, until the figures began to rise dramatically with about 150 cases in the millennium year, reaching 333 cases in 2002, the worst year ever.

But the figures have been dropping significantly since, to 41 in 2006.

The Government spent hundreds of millions on measures to contain the disease.

Fears that eating contaminated meat could affect people were confirmed a decade ago when BSE was linked to a human form of the disease, variant CJD.

A recent report suggested that four people in the Republic have died from new variant CJD in the past decade. Some of them had lived abroad for long periods and may have become infected there.

However, meat exports have well recovered from the crisis. But Government measures continue, seeking to reassure consumers and protect important export outlets. The expensive slaughtering out of an entire herd when even one animal contracts the disease still goes on.

All animals over 30 months are still being tested for BSE at abattoirs. Specified risk material, such as spinal cords, is removed from all cattle slaughtered.

Although there is far less public concern about BSE nowadays, there is relief in many quarters that the disease seems to be on the way out.

Cases of BSE continued to fall in 2006

RTE.net

BSE found in four-year-old cow

Friday, 29 July 2005 17:01

The cattle brain disease, BSE, has been discovered in another four-year old cow.

It is the second case involving a cow born in 2001. The latest case involves an animal from a dairy herd in Co Monaghan.

It had been hoped that animals born after 1997 would not become infected with BSE because regulations to prevent the spread of the disease were tightened significantly around that time.

Most of the 1,500 BSE cases in Ireland have been blamed on contaminated animal feed.

The Department of Agriculture had predicted that a small number of cases might involve animals born after 1997. So far, 14 cases have involved animals born since that time.

However, the overall trend is downward. The total number of cases this year is 42. This compares with 77 cases for the equivalent period in 2004.

There were 119 cases for the equivalent period in 2003, and 211 cases for the equivalent period in 2002.

A second case this week involved an 11-year-old dairy cow in Kerry.

BSE found in four-year-old cow

DB wrote: "I spent a several weeks in England around 1992 and had mostly beef to eat. I wonder how much time has to pass before you can consider yourself in the clear?"

I'm not a physician, but from everything I've read, it's my understanding that there is a several years long incubation period for vCJD although some people have expressed symptoms sooner than others.

There was one case of an adult male from Saudi Arabia who in 2005 first displayed symptoms of vCJD.

After exhaustive research into his background, it was determined that he probably first was exposed to vCJD when he was a child in Saudi Arabia.

See CDC vCJD (Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease)

The general age range for vCJD ranges from 28 to 55. Researchers believe that young children through young adults are more susceptible to infection from the vCJD prion.

My guess is that after sixteen years with no symptoms, because you're an adult, and remembering that not everyone in the UK acquired vCJD, that you're well into the breathe easy zone.

Here's more from the CDC:

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Variant) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Prion Diseases)

Occurrence

HUMAN

From 1995 through mid August 2006, a total of 195 human cases of vCJD were reported worldwide, 162 in the UK, 20 in France, 4 in Ireland, 2 in the United States (US), and 1 each in Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Spain.

Seven of the non-UK case-patients were most likely exposed to the BSE agent in the UK because of their having resided there during a key exposure period of the UK population to the BSE agent.

These latter case-patients were those from Canada, Japan, the US, 1 of the 20 from France, and 2 of the 4 from Ireland.

The median age at death from vCJD in the UK has been 28 years and almost all cases have been in persons under age 55 years. The reasons for this age distribution are not well understood but it suggests that older adults are much less susceptible to vCJD through the oral route of exposure than are children and young adults.

By year of onset, the incidence of vCJD in the UK appears to have peaked in 1999 and to have been declining thereafter.

In contrast, the number of reported cases in France has been increasing since the beginning of 2005. However, the future pattern of these ongoing epidemics remains uncertain.

In 2004, a prevalence study of asymptomatic vCJD infections in the UK identified three positive appendices out of a sample of 12,674 surgically removed tonsils and appendices that were satisfactory for analysis.

Genetic studies completed on two of the appendices regarded as positive for vCJD revealed that both had a different polymorphism at codon 129 of the prion protein gene than any of the patients with clinical vCJD tested to date, indicating that more people are genetically susceptible to vCJD infection, although not necessarily to the disease, than had been previously determined (4).

Transfusion of blood contaminated with the vCJD agent is believed to be responsible for at least three vCJD infections reported in the UK, including two blood recipients with clinical vCJD and one infected recipient who died without signs of neurologic disease (5).

These three recipients indicate that the blood of asymptomatic, infected donors can contain infectivity 18 months to 3.5 years before the onset of vCJD disease.

The possibility of transfusion transmission of vCJD had prompted the US Food and Drug Administration to publish guidance in 1999 and 2002 outlining a geography-based donor deferral policy to reduce the risk of such transmission in the United States. This guidance document included an appendix that listed European countries with BSE or a possible increased risk of BSE for use in determining blood donor deferrals (see http://www.aphis.usda.gov/NCIE/country.html#BSE).

* * * * *

Risk for Travelers

The current risk of acquiring vCJD from eating beef (muscle meat) and beef products produced from cattle in countries with at least a possibly increased risk of BSE cannot be determined precisely.

If public health measures are being well implemented, the current risk of acquiring vCJD from eating beef and beef products from these countries appears to be extremely small, although probably not zero.

A rough estimate of this risk for the UK in the recent past, for example, was about 1 case per 10 billion servings.

Among many uncertainties affecting such risk determinations are

1) the incubation period between exposure to the infective agent and onset of illness,
2) the appropriate interpretation and public health significance of the prevalence estimates of asymptomatic human vCJD infections,
3) the sensitivities of each country’s surveillance for BSE and vCJD,
4) the compliance with and effectiveness of public health measures instituted in each country to prevent BSE contamination of human food, and
5) details about cattle products from one country distributed and consumed elsewhere.

As of August 2006, despite the apparent exceedingly low risk of contracting vCJD through consumption of food in Europe, the US blood donor deferral criteria focuses on the time (cumulatively 5 years or more) that a person lived in continental Europe from 1980 through the present.

In addition, these deferral criteria apply to persons who lived in the UK from 1980 through 1996.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Variant) and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Prion Diseases)

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