No Reports of Human Mad Cow Disease - CDC
Date: 26-May-04
Country: USA
Author: Randy Fabi
The Web site of a Nashville television story earlier on Tuesday posted a story about a U.S. soldier stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, who had developed a case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). The variant from of the disease, vCJD, comes from eating beef infected with mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
The rumor in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading pits, that a person was being treated at the Mayo Clinic for vCJD, apparently sprang from the Web site report. Live and feeder cattle futures fell as much as the 3-cent daily limit.
vCJD is always fatal and has killed about 140 people, mostly in Britain.
"I don't know of any active cases right now of the variant kind," said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Daigle said CDC last year investigated a case of classic CJD in a U.S. soldier stationed at Fort Campbell. CJD occurs naturally in about one in 1 million people, apparently due to a genetic mutation. The United States has between 200 and 300 cases of CJD each year, the CDC said.
"The serviceman we did an investigation on had been deployed to Iraq, but his behavior was erratic and they brought him back to the States," Daigle said. "A biopsy was done ... and it was ruled a classic CJD."
A domestic case of vCJD has never been diagnosed in the U.S. In 2002, a woman in Florida was found to have contracted the disease while living in Britain, according to the CDC.
CJD and BSE are members of a class of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs. They are believed to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, said it would closely review Tuesday's sharp drop in cattle futures.
"Anytime there is a dramatic move up or down in any market, we intensify our surveillance efforts," a commission spokesman said.