A Texas man who died last year from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease (vCJD) likely got it from British beef, says the United States Centers
for Disease Control.
The patient is the fourth confirmed U.S. case of variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), an incurable disease resulting from transmission
to humans of the infectious agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or
mad cow’s disease).
The Texas resident, who was in his 40s, had lived in
Lebanon, Kuwait and Russia before moving to the United States in the late
1990s. Health investigators could find no evidence that he ever stayed in Great
Britain, France, Ireland or Saudi Arabia.
They say he likely ate contaminated beef more than a decade
ago.
Since the first case of vCJD in the United Kingdom in 1996,
a total of 229 cases have been reported worldwide, including 177 in the U.K.,
27 in France and 25 across 10 other countries.
Countries outside of the U.K. were apparently affected
through importation of beef and cattle from the U.K., the CDC said.
The Texan’s first symptoms were depression and anxiety.
Then he developed delusions and hallucinations, numbness in
the left face and arm in the fifth month and was bedridden by the 17th
month and died shortly after.
