Da fare and ratal drain bisease ?
Posted on 11/06/2003 9:50:55 AM PST by blam
Brain disease could be 'catching'
November 06 2003 at 06:54AM
By Maggie Fox
Washington - Swiss researchers said on Thursday they found infectious proteins in the muscle tissue of patients who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and said the finding may suggest the rare and fatal brain disease could be passed on during standard surgery.
The study, published in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also raises the question of whether mad cow disease N bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) N might be passed on in muscle tissue and not simply in brain, lymph and spleen tissue.
Dr Adriano Aguzzi, of the University Hospital of Zurich, led the study, in which the researchers examined the tissues of patients who died of CJD, Alzheimer's disease and other causes. There is no cure for any of the diseases and they are always fatal
BSE, CJD and related diseases, including a new form of CJD caused by eating infected beef products, are caused by an infectious version of a protein called a prion.
There is no cure for any of the diseases and they are always fatal. BSE decimated Britain's cattle population and has spread to several countries, including Switzerland.
CJD occurs naturally in about one in a million people and its cause is unknown. The new variant of CJD, called vCJD, has been diagnosed in 139 people, according to the World Health Organization.
Most cases of CJD have no known cause N they are sporadic. Up to 10 percent can be caused by a gene mutation and about 10 percent are caused by the use of infected brain, eye or nerve tissue in surgical operations.
The only way to confirm CJD is a brain autopsy, but experts are trying to develop a blood test. Animals can be tested for BSE using samples from the tonsils.
Aguzzi's team examined 36 patients with what was believed to be sporadic CJD who died between 1996 and 2002.
They found prions in all brain tissue and in 10 of 28 spleen specimens. They also found prions in eight of 32 muscle samples.
"Our findings arouse concern about the possibility of iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment) transmission of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," they wrote.
They stressed that they had not shown the muscle tissue was infectious and said perhaps the Swiss samples were unique in some way.
But they noted that patients who had undergone surgery of any kind had a slightly higher risk of CJD.
"Some allegedly sporadic cases may in reality have an iatrogenic origin," they wrote.
"Our results suggest that muscle and lymph-node biopsies can be used as diagnostic procedures for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," they added.
The writier of this article must have missed that Foxnews report a couple of months ago of a drug that was create to treat those with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and that is was showing good results.
Da fare and ratal drain bisease ?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.