Will I always get vCJD when I eat infected mad cow disease meat? Or there is a chance that I wont develop vCJD even I got into contact with a mad cow disease prion?
Since first identified in 1980’s there have been only 200 cases identified and 170 of those were in the United Kingdom. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is not the same disease as what is called Classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Given the large number of diseased cows that were consumed in the UK during this period there has to be something more than just the consumption of infected cattle and they think there is a genetic aspect to the disease. We also don’t understand exactly what the relationship is between the infected cattle and the people who came down with the disease. We also don’t know why only people under 40 seemed to come down with the disease.What we do know is that vCJD is very rare, but if you are concerned avoid any beef that contains brain or spinal tissue. In other words, you won’t get it from steak or milk, hamburger might be a little iffy but given our inspection process you stand a better chance of getting e-Coli.
Can vCJD / Mad Cow be transmitted this way?
Three secondary cases of vCJD related to blood transfusion occurred in the UK. I do NOT believe dry blood on a piece of paper poses any risk However, .It is time for the public to be told the truth about prion disease risks:: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and sporadic Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (sCJD) are sister prion diseases, transmissible, infectious by medical equipment, (scopes, etc.) dental and eye equipment, blood, urine, feces, saliva, mucous (aerosols: possibly by coughs & sneezes) Doctors frequently misdiagnose AD and sCJD one for the other. The symptoms and neuropathology are almost identical. Right now the US is in the middle of a raging, always fatal, prion disease epidemic: There are over 6 million victims of AD and 1 million Parkinson's Disease victims, with a new AD case every 69 seconds ! BBC reports about 820,000 people are affected by dementia in the UK. Recent research (October 2011) by Dr. Claudio Soto, et al, University of Texas Medical School, has confirmed earlier research which found injecting Alzheimer's brain material into mice brains caused infectious prion disease. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/... See Video - Dr. Soto on Alzheimer's disease and prions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtN6hoyTdR4 For more on Alzheimers Disease and prions: www.alzheimers-prions.com/ Helane Shields, Alton, NH hshields@tds.net
Should I be afraid of dying from vCJD (Mad Cow)?
I never consumed any British beef, nor did I live in Britain, but when I was in Sweden once I tried some British candies (that was in 1993, during the biggest height of the outbreak of BSE), and now I heard that Imay get vCJD from eating them as well! Here is why - They contained bovine gelatin. Since almost all cows were infected I certainly consumed gelatin from a diseased cow and maybe I got prions in my organism that way too. Also, they contained milk. Milk may have prions as well. And also if sugar in it was made using bovine bone char as a filter.......than prions may have got invaded the candies that way too. And if their (natural btw) colors and flavors came from plants harvested with bone meal, then maybe the prions got into them this way as well. I am so literally freaked out that I keep having horrible panic attacks and thinking that I have symptoms of vCJD. I am almost certain that I am infected from these candies and that I will die. 20 years passed and I am alive, but I heard that the incubation can last even 50 years! What should I do, I can't calm down and I am afraid that I will die from this!
How long it will take to die after contracting vCJD, or the human form of mad cow disease?
First of all, the variant form of CJD (vCJD you mentioned) should not be confused with the classic form of CJD. There are several important differences between these two forms of the disease. The median age at death of patients with classic CJD in the United States, for example, is 68 years, and very few cases occur in persons under 30 years of age. In contrast, the median age at death of patients with vCJD in the United Kingdom is 28 years. The incubation period for vCJD is currently unknown because it is a new disease. However, it is likely that ultimately this incubation period will be measured in terms of many years or decades. To answer your "how long it will take to die, without considering incubation period": Out of 3 people who were ever been diagnosed with vCJD in the US, 1 died 3 years after the onset of symptoms (considered as the end of incubation period), the other died in approx 4. months, unknown for the remaining patient.
What are the odds of me having Mad Cow Disease if I ate fast food meat every day in my time in England and the rest of Europe?
(Humans develop vCJD). If you were eating cheap beef in the UK AFTER 1996, the risk is just about zero, because the possibly-infected tissues (specified bovine offals) were prohibited from entering any mammalian food chain starting then.If you were eating cheap beef (pies, sausages, etc.) in the UK between 1985 and 1996, the risk exists but is very small. Consider that in those ten years, an estimated 50–100 million infected cattle were consumed by the 65 million UK population, but fewer than 200 UK citizens became ill. The route for almost all of them was probably via ingestion, but we know from animal studies that this is an extraordinarily inefficient way of infecting any animal. (It's about 1/10,000 the risk of intra-cerebral transfer).Finally, even if you ate beef in the UK every day 1985–1996, AND you were homozygous for methionine at codon 129 (the genetic group into which all but one of the cases belong), considering that 26 years have passed since SBOs were removed from the human food chain, I would say your risk is as close to zero as possible.If you ate beef in the rest of Europe the risk essentially does not exist.
Was mad cow disease the result of mutagen breeding?
Several prion-mediated disease have been identified in animals: scrapie (200 years ago), mink spongiform encephalopathy, (1954), chronic wasting disease (1967), and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (1985). In humans we know of kuru (1950s), several types of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (1928), and variant CJD (1996). This has nothing to do with "breeding", other than the use of "calf-starter" (meat and bone meal, or MBM). (I have no idea what is meant by "mutagen breeding".) In the example of BSE leading to vCJD, some evidence indicates that the first step may have been Kudu (antelope) brought into the London Zoo. The animal died, and the carcass was probably rendered into meat and bone meal (MBM) and entered the livestock feeding program (including feed for bovines). From there, we witnessed the amplification of the disease throughout beef and dairy herds in the UK, and to a much lesser extent in about 15 other countries. The exact mechanism by which 'normal' or 'healthy' prion protein becomes mis-folded, and in turn passes this aberration on to the next prion, is not fully understood. There is evidence for iatrogenic CJD infection (due to certain hospital surgical treatments), as well as two varieties of CJD that run in families.
If you ingest a mad cow disease prion, will you definitely get the disease?
We know from careful measurements among animals that a very small amount of infective material (molecular amounts) adherent on the surface of surgical stainless steel used as a cerebral probe (directly between the 'folds' of the brain) will convey the infection in the majority of cases. This is true even when the instruments have passed through more than six cycles of standard hospital sterilization (121'C autoclaving). On the other hand, ingestion of infective tissue by the same animal appears to require an estimated 10,000 times that amount to produce the same incidence of infection. So ingestion is a very inefficient way to convey prion infectivity. In retrospect, this explains why during the 10 year period BEFORE the human risk was confirmed 1986-96), an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 infective cattle were eaten by a population of 55,000,000 in the UK, with only 177 cases of vCJD recorded to date.The answer to the question is that ingestion is a very inefficient way of acquiring vCJD. However, the low threat is offset by the magnitude of the problem if you are infected (slow loss of awareness and brain function, with 100% fatality rate). I avoid eating all tissues that can convey the infection (brain, spinal cord, eyes, lymph nodes, etc.).