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State tests will seek cause of Portsmouth woman's death (Possibly variant CJD or Mad Cow Disease)
The Virginia-Pilot and Hampton Roads.com ^ | April 11, 2008 | By Nancy Young

Posted on 04/12/2008 5:06:36 PM PDT by bd476


State tests will seek cause of Portsmouth woman's death

By Nancy Young
The Virginian-Pilot
April 11, 2008

PORTSMOUTH

The Virginia Department of Health should have test results back in several months that will determine whether a young woman who died Wednesday had a rare brain disorder that has been linked to mad cow disease.

Health department officials stressed again Thursday that they were looking into a range of disorders.

The 22-year-old woman, identified in media reports as Aretha Vinson, died at Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center. She had been suffering from encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition that can be caused by "infections, lack of oxygen to the brain, liver failure, kidney failure, toxic exposures, metabolic diseases, brain tumors, increased intracranial pressure and poor nutrition," said Dr. Karen Remley, state health commissioner, in a written statement Thursday.

"Further testing is the only way to know what caused this illness," Remley added.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Virginia will be among those analyzing test results.

One possibility is a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as vCJD, a rare degenerative brain disorder that has been linked to consumption of contaminated beef. The disease is not spread through casual contact from person to person and is thought to have an incubation period of 10 years or more.

There are also other forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as CJD, that are unrelated to beef consumption. State officials will look into those as well.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease strikes about 200 people a year in the United States. The most common forms of the disease have no known cause or are linked to a genetic mutation. Fewer than 1 percent of cases are linked to medical procedures.

To date, the CDC has recorded three cases in the United States of the variant that has been linked to mad cow disease. In two of the cases, the people were born and raised in Great Britain - which has seen the most cases - before moving to this country. The third person had recently moved from Saudi Arabia.



TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: creutzfeldjakob; madcow; surgerycomplication; variantcjd
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Daily Press

Portsmouth woman's death under investigation


By VERONICA GORLEY CHUFO

April 11, 2008

RICHMOND

The illness and Wednesday death of a Portsmouth woman spurred a Virginia Department of Health investigation Thursday.

The woman suffered from encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. Her illness has been linked in news reports to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease — the human form of mad cow disease.

It's a very rare condition related to the consumption of beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It's always fatal, the health department said in a news release.

Snip

An MRI, or brain scan, was sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Additional tests will be handled by the University of Virginia and the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center in Cleveland. Results are expected to take several months.

At least 200 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease have been reported worldwide since 1996. Three cases have been reported in U.S. residents, and they were all exposed outside the country, Remley said...

Excerpted. Continuing Portsmouth woman's death under investigation


1 posted on 04/12/2008 5:06:36 PM PDT by bd476
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To: All


Also see:

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


2 posted on 04/12/2008 5:08:38 PM PDT by bd476
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To: bd476

May she rest in peace. Her mother said she had never travelled outside of the United States.


3 posted on 04/12/2008 5:10:05 PM PDT by brwnsuga (Proud, Black, Sexy Conservative!!!)
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To: brwnsuga
Thank you Brwnsuga. May she rest in peace.

If she acquired or inherited Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (CJD) or the variant CJD also known as Mad Cow Disease, either way it's very sad.


4 posted on 04/12/2008 5:18:59 PM PDT by bd476
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To: All
Cattle Network

Beef Library: Background On BSE & vCJD

4/10/2008 6:52:00 AM

BSE (sometimes referred to as "mad cow disease") and variant and classic CJD belong to the unusual group of progressive, degenerative neurological diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).

These diseases are characterized by a long incubation period of up to several years, during which there is no visible indication of the disease. The incubation period for BSE among cattle ranges from three to eight years; for vCJD among humans, the incubation period is unknown, but is at least five years and could extend up to 20 years or longer. The diseases are invariably fatal; there is no known treatment or cure.

It is believed that vCJD may be acquired from eating food products containing the BSE agent, and there is strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence for a causal association between vCJD and BSE.

The absence of confirmed cases of vCJD in geographic areas free of BSE supports a causal association. BSE and vCJD have never been identified in the United States.

BSE among cattle was first described in the U.K. in November 1986. Epidemiological evidence established that the outbreak of BSE was related to the production and use over many years of contaminated meat-and-bone meal. The source of the BSE outbreak is uncertain.

There is strong evidence and general agreement that the outbreak was amplified by feeding rendered bovine meat-and-bone meal to young calves.

The vast majority of BSE cases have been reported in the U.K. Through November 2000, about 177,500 cases of BSE have been confirmed there in more than 35,000 herds of cattle. The U.K. epidemic peaked in January 1993 at nearly 1,000 new cases per week.

Surveillance in Europe has also led to the identification of cases of BSE in Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland and, most recently, in Germany, Spain and Italy.

From 1995 through early December 2000, 88 human cases of vCJD were reported in the U.K, three in France and one in Ireland.

European countries have instituted a variety of public health control measures, such as BSE surveillance, the culling of sick animals, the banning of specified risk materials (SRMs), or a combination of these, to prevent potentially BSE-infected tissues from entering the human food chain. Due to its early outbreak, the most stringent of these measures have been applied in the U.K. In June 2000, the European Union Commission on Food Safety and Animal Welfare adopted a decision requiring all member states to remove SRMs from the animal feed and human food chains as of October 1, 2000; such bans had already been instituted in most member states.

Source: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2001pres/01fsbse.html


Note: The above information was found on
Cattle Network.com:

Beef Library: Background On BSE & vCJD


5 posted on 04/12/2008 5:52:56 PM PDT by bd476
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To: bd476; All
To all

fool you are the only post on this topic, which is a bunch of speculation! How long you been a member of Peta anyway???

6 posted on 04/12/2008 8:18:08 PM PDT by org.whodat (What's the difference between a Democrat and a republican????)
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To: bd476

mad cow disease and

the clintons

just don’t go away!


7 posted on 04/12/2008 8:37:43 PM PDT by ken21 ( people die + you never ,hear from them again.)
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To: ken21
LOL!

8 posted on 04/12/2008 11:21:28 PM PDT by bd476
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To: org.whodat
org.whodat wrote:

To all

fool you are the only post on this topic, which is a bunch of speculation! How long you been a member of Peta anyway???"


That's a powerful imagination you have there. Name-calling to boot.

Ever thought about channeling that into a career?

9 posted on 04/12/2008 11:26:36 PM PDT by bd476
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To: org.whodat; blam; dynachrome; Renfield; BenLurkin; neverdem; Shermy; A. Pole; ...
org.whodat wrote: "To all

fool you are the only post on this topic, which is a bunch of speculation! How long you been a member of Peta anyway???"


That's a hostile accusation, Org.whodat, where you accuse any FReeper who has posted an article about Mad Cow Disease as being a "fool" and "member of Peta."


10 posted on 04/13/2008 1:20:07 AM PDT by bd476
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To: bd476; org.whodat; All
I've known about BSE and variant CJD or Mad Cow Disease for many years. That is one reason why I gave up eating at Mickey D's. Here are two others:

Artificial hormones in U.S. beef linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer

More than one reason for Japan's threatened beef boycott

Anybody who takes his kids to a fast food restaurant today because they have a play area is nuts. JHO . . . Deal with it objectively. For the record, I hate Peta.

11 posted on 04/13/2008 1:49:37 AM PDT by ex-Texan (Matthew 7: 1 - 6)
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To: org.whodat

What’s yer beef?


12 posted on 04/13/2008 1:53:05 AM PDT by MEG33 (God Bless Our Military)
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To: bd476
I'm guessing it's CJD because as your link states:

At least 200 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease have been reported worldwide since 1996. Three cases have been reported in U.S. residents, and they were all exposed outside the country, Remley said...

I'm not even certain that statistic (3 in US) is accurate, as I only recall the one person, the lady in FL that had eaten the British BSE meat. However, it is quite premature at this point to conclude that she developed vCJD. Much more likely she developed CJD.

A neighbor of ours developed CJD and of course died from it. She was elderly and they had just finished building a beautiful house which her husband subsequently sold and moved away.

13 posted on 04/13/2008 5:31:08 AM PDT by prairiebreeze (I am a proud supporter of Israel.)
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To: ex-Texan

BSE as only ever been found in neural tissues, never in muscle meat. Since I don’t chow down on brains or spinal columns I happily eat beef of every cut even at McD’s.

Have a meatloaf cooking for Sunday dinner as I type.

:^)


14 posted on 04/13/2008 5:33:15 AM PDT by prairiebreeze (I am a proud supporter of Israel.)
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To: prairiebreeze

I eat beef, too.


15 posted on 04/13/2008 6:26:35 AM PDT by MEG33 (God Bless Our Military)
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To: MEG33

There was one case in Britain where a vegan died of vCJD.


16 posted on 04/13/2008 6:34:27 AM PDT by Perdogg (Reagan would have never said "She's my girl")
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To: org.whodat
To all fool you are the only post on this topic, which is a bunch of speculation! How long you been a member of Peta anyway???

This is the most ignorant post I've seen all week.

Congratulations.

17 posted on 04/13/2008 6:35:49 AM PDT by Amelia
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To: bd476
And your ignorance is attributed to what??
18 posted on 04/13/2008 6:52:59 AM PDT by org.whodat (What's the difference between a Democrat and a republican????)
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To: ex-Texan
That statement of artificial hormones in beef linked to anything is pure fantasy. There is no link, only maybes, which is what all of these posts are, maybe and possible. They are nonsense of the highest order.

And anyone that gives any creditability to this bilge has spent to much time watching for black helicopters.

19 posted on 04/13/2008 6:57:18 AM PDT by org.whodat (What's the difference between a Democrat and a republican????)
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To: bd476
I'm betting it's not the vCJD. These figs are for Britain since I found them first....

CJD Figures 1990-Apr 2008

Note the decline in vCJD.

20 posted on 04/13/2008 7:01:30 AM PDT by mewzilla (In politics the middle way is none at all. John Adams)
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