New Hampshire hospital contacts 8 patients who may have been exposed to deadly, rare brain disease

ap ^ | September 05, 2013

[BenLurkin]

Officials believe the extremely rare disease caused the August death of a patient who had brain surgery at the hospital in May, and they say there's a remote chance it was transmitted to other brain surgery patients because the abnormal proteins that cause the disease can survive standard sterilization practices. ...

About 200 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are recorded annually in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health, with the vast majority occurring spontaneously. In fewer than 1 percent of cases, the disease is transmitted by exposure to brain or nervous system tissue, and there have been only four reported cases of transmission via surgical instruments. None of those were in the United States, and the most recent case was in 1976, Pepe said.

[Mastador1]

Didn’t they used to call that mad cow disease? I guess they didn’t want to upset people more than they had to.

[Steely Tom]

Where was this patient from?

[bigheadfred]

mad cow disease

They should call it The Hillary Syndrome.

[James C. Bennett]

The prion protein molecules that cause Mad Cow Disease can even survive nuclear irradiation.

[Mastador1]

Too obvious, and redundant to boot.

[Past Your Eyes]

Great. My brother is going into that hospital for surgery this month. But it is for his heart, not his brain.

[reg45]

“Mad cow” disease, first observed in Hillary Clinton.

[BenLurkin]

That would be cankleitis. She has a severe case.

[crazycatlady]

It’s mad cow in cattle, scrapie in sheep.

[Mastador1]

I kind of like Holey Head better for people than Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

[neverdem]

13 patients possibly exposed to fatal brain disease USAToday's version

[BenLurkin]

thx!

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

NOTE!!! I have lost my hard drive, if you joined this list after 7/10/13 please remind me to get back on. All changes after then have gone away. *sigh*

[Cyber Liberty]

Didn’t they used to call that mad cow disease?

No, that's Bovine Encephalitis. This is different, 100% fatal. Both are very difficult to track because the pathogens are neither bacterial not viral. If I understand correctly (I did not stay at Holiday Inn Sexpress last night), they're protein-based. The proteins can be replicated and spread, but not through means of seed or spore. You can burn it and it does nothing to stop the spread, in fact it makes it worse by spreading the protein molecules.