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Texas: One fatal case of suspected vCJD (human mad cow) disease in cattle worker

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  • Texas: One fatal case of suspected vCJD (human mad cow) disease in cattle worker



    [7] Texas CJD patient
    Date: Mon 29 Mar 2010
    Source: Recordandolinda.com [edited]
    <http://recordandoalinda.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&It emid=8>


    Physician Discharge Summary, Parkland Hospital, Dallas Texas General
    Neurology Team: General Neurology Team

    A Hispanic female with no past medical history presented with 14
    months of increasing/progressive altered mental status, generalized
    weakness, inability to walk, loss of appetite, inability to speak,
    tremor and bowel/bladder incontinence. She was in her usual state of
    health up until February 2009, when her husband noted that she began
    forgetting things like names and short term memories. He also noticed
    mild/vague personality changes such as increased aggression. In March
    [2009], she was involved in a hit-and-run motor vehicle accident,
    although she was not injured. The police tracked her down and
    ticketed her. At that time, her son deployed to Iraq with the Army
    and her husband assumed her mentation changes were due to stress over
    these 2 events. Also in March 2009, she began to have weakness in her
    legs, making it difficult to walk. Over the next few months, her
    mentation and personality changes worsened, getting to a point where
    she could no longer recognize her children.
    She was eating less and less. She was losing more weight. In the last
    2-3 months, she reached the point where she could not walk without an
    assist, then one month ago, she stopped talking, only making
    grunting/aggressive sounds when anyone came near her. She also became
    both bowel and bladder incontinent, having to wear diapers. Her
    tremor and body jerks worsened, and her hands assumed a sort of
    permanent grip position, leading her family to put tennis balls in
    her hands to protect her fingers. The husband said that they had
    lived in Nebraska for the past 21 years. They had seen a doctor there
    during the summer time who prescribed her Seroquel and Lexapro,
    thinking these were signs of a mood disorder. However, the
    medications did not help, and she continued to deteriorate
    clinically. Up until about 6 years ago, the patient worked at Tyson
    foods, where she worked on the assembly line slaughtering cattle and
    preparing them for packaging. She was exposed to brain and spinal
    cord matter when she would euthanize the cattle
    . The husband says
    that he does not know any fellow workers with a similar illness. He
    also says that she did not have any preceding illness or travel. The
    patient died at 38 years old on 6 Feb 2010 in Mesquite Texas
    .

    --
    Communicated by:
    Terry S Singeltary Sr <flounder9@verizon.net>

    [Terry S. Singeltary Sr. has added the following comment:

    "According to the World Health Organisation, the future public health
    threat of vCJD in the UK and Europe and potentially the rest of the
    world is of concern and currently unquantifiable. However, the
    possibility of a significant and geographically diverse vCJD epidemic
    occurring over the next few decades cannot be dismissed
    <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2003/9241545887.pdf>. The key
    word here is diverse. What does diverse mean? If USA scrapie
    transmitted to USA bovine does not produce pathology as the UK c-BSE,
    then why would CJD from there look like UK vCJD?"

    Attention has been drawn to this case on account of the occupation of
    the of the deceased patient and her prolonged exposure to cattle
    brain and spinal cord tissue fragments
    . Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
    (CJD) is a rare, degenerative, invariably fatal brain disorder. It
    affects about one person in every one million people per year
    worldwide; in the United States, there are about 200 cases per year.
    CJD usually appears in later life and runs a rapid course. Typically,
    onset of symptoms occurs about age 60, and about 90 percent of
    patients die within one year. In the early stages of disease,
    patients may have failing memory, behavioral changes, lack of
    coordination and visual disturbances. As the illness progresses,
    mental deterioration becomes pronounced, and involuntary movements,
    blindness, weakness of extremities, and coma may occur. There are 3
    major categories of CJD.

    CJD cannot be transmitted through the air or through touching or most
    other forms of casual contact. Spouses and other household members of
    sporadic CJD patients have no higher risk of contracting the disease
    than the general population. However, exposure to brain tissue and
    spinal cord fluid from infected patients should be avoided to prevent
    transmission of the disease through these materials. In some
    situations, CJD has spread to other people from grafts of dura mater
    (a tissue that covers the brain), transplanted corneas, implantation
    of inadequately sterilized electrodes in the brain, and injections of
    contaminated pituitary growth hormone derived from human pituitary
    glands taken from cadavers (all usually designated as iatrogenic
    cases). Since 1985, all human growth hormone used in the United
    States has been synthesized by recombinant DNA procedures, which
    eliminates the risk of transmitting CJD by this route
    .

    The appearance of the new variant of CJD (nv-CJD or v-CJD) in several
    younger than average people in Great Britain and France has led to
    concern that BSE may be transmitted to humans through consumption of
    contaminated beef. Although laboratory tests have shown a strong
    similarity between the prions causing BSE and v-CJD, there is no
    direct proof to support this theory.

    Nonetheless, the occupation of the deceased patient in Texas has
    raised concerns regarding the origin of this woman's illness, and
    further investigation is merited
    . - Mod.CP]

  • #2
    Re: Texas: One fatal case of suspected vCJD (human mad cow) disease in cattle worker

    I would hope they would not be using this type of equipment in a facility that processed material with BSE risk, but there was an outbreak of autoimmune neurological disease in workers at a facility that processed pigs for the meat market not long ago.

    They were using a device to blow the pigs' brains out to clean the heads, and the material formed a fine mist from which the workers were not protected.

    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...gbrainmystery/
    Exactly why the rash of cases emerged so suddenly isn?t known. The factory shut down the pig brain processing center soon after the disease emerged, and no new cases have been reported.
    So it is possible to inhale CNS material at a processing facility, and I'm sure there could be other routes of infection.
    _____________________________________________

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