Conn. woman had signs of human mad cow

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040326-121100-6776r

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- A Connecticut woman who physicians initially suspected in 2000 of being the nation's first case of human mad cow disease appears to have been overlooked by state and federal health officials, United Press International has learned.

Jodi Tharp, who was 50 when she died in March 2001, seems to have slipped through the cracks of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's monitoring program for the disease, and the exact nature of her condition probably will never be known.

Jim Tharp first noticed there was something wrong with his wife in late October 2000.

Jodi called him from a tile store located about five minutes by car from their home in Andover, Conn., saying she didn't know how to get back. Concerned something was seriously wrong, Jim said he would come get her. Jodi declined his offer and said she'd find her way. She finally arrived home 30 minutes later.

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[Momgonepostal]

1. darn it, that link doesn't work for me nt

[chasqui]

2. Worked for me.

[AlCzervik]

3. Just one

more reason not to eat meat.

[nodehopper]

4. Organic farm meat is fine

This isn't a vegetarian vs. carnivore thing...It's a meat-industry and their horrible disregard for human health issues.

[Coventina]

5. AAARRRGGG!

This makes me SO MAD!!!!

If I were her husband, I'd be beside myself.

[AP]

6. I wonder if Chronic Fatigue Syndrom isn't Mad Cow.

Don't a lot of people diagnosed with that end up in nursing homes, in diapers and dying young.

[orthogonal]

7. re: I wonder if Chronic Fatigue Syndrom isn't Mad Cow.

"I wonder if Chronic Fatigue Syndrom isn't Mad Cow."
It's not. Human mad cow -- technically
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD, has a median duration oif illness of only 14 montsh, and is characterized by:

Early in the illness, patients usually experience psychiatric symptoms, which most commonly take the form of depression or, less often, a schizophrenia-like psychosis. Unusual sensory symptoms, such as "stickiness" of the skin, have been experienced by half of the cases early in the illness. Neurological signs, including unsteadiness, difficulty walking and involuntary movements, develop as the illness progresses and, by the time of death, patients become completely immobile and mute.

([link:www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs180/en/|World Health Orgnization). (God this not-HTML markup is a PITA!)

[alfredo]

10. What is the incubation period? I have heard it could be decades, but

I don't know if that is the current thinking.

[JetCityLiberal]

11. "Mad Cow Disease May Have 30 Year Incubation Period"

<snip>

The findings of the inquiry into a cluster of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) cases -- the human version of mad cow disease -- suggest the fatal disease has an average incubation period of 30 years and may claim thousands or tens of thousands more victims.

The inquiry report into five deaths in the English village of Queniborough, Leicestershire, blamed specific butchering methods for contamination of meat with bovine brain and estimated an incubation period of the disease between 10 and 16 years.

But Professor John Collinge, a member of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), which advises the government on mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), told BBC Radio: "For me the main finding from this report is that the significant exposure appears to pre-date 1985.

http://www.mercola.com/beef/incubation.htm


And this is just the average.

JetCityLiberal

[Piltdown13]

15. The Queniborough cluster is very interesting

Unfortunately, we just won't know for sure until we get a more specific idea of how infection occurs (leading to better estimates of how many people may have had significant exposure, etc.). I'm not sure how meaningful that average of 30 years is; more recent research has refined the incubation estimates for the cases already identified, but if the genetic links to susceptibility pan out, it may turn out that we need to be thinking in terms of separate incubation estimates for different genotype groups, rather than in terms of a population average.

[Piltdown13]

14. Short answer: we're not entirely certain

I've seen estimates ranging from about 16 years to, more recently, about 12.6 years, assuming that the major exposure occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s (which IMHO is a valid assumption -- yes, exposure may even still be occurring, for all we know, but MOST exposure probably occurred during the height of the BSE epidemic before regulations were passed and enforced regarding feeding practices and cow parts restricted from the human food chain). It should be noted that these incubation periods, on present evidence, pertain to only one group of individuals, possessing a certain genotype at one of the genetic loci that deal with prions (we have prions normally; the problem in the TSEs is that the prions "flip" from the inoccuous form over to the pathological form). Basically, to date everyone who has been confirmed or suspected to have died from vCJD has possessed the "MM" genotype at that locus, at least in Britain (similar genetic results have been noted in kuru victims as well). This variant accounts for something like 40% of individuals in the UK, with the remaining 60% being MV or VV. It is not currently known whether those other two genotypes are "immune" to vCJD, or if those populations will experience their own vCJD epidemics after a longer incubation period. If vCJD follows the kuru pattern, we may very well see more "waves" of infections/cases; long after kuru was mostly eradicated, a few cases popped up in elderly women, who proved to have one of the genotypes (can't recall which) that appeared to be "immune" earlier in the epidemic.

It should be noted, though, that given the time frames of exposure and the theoretically much longer incubation periods involved, huge numbers of MV and VV individuals who might have eventually become part of later vCJD "waves" will die of something else first.

Side note -- some scientists in the UK are also looking at the possibility that vCJD susceptibility may be age-dependent in some way. This hypothesis comes from observations of the incidence and mortality curves among different age cohorts (born pre-1945, born 1945-1969; born in the 1970s, and born since 1980, are the cohorts, IIRC). Essentially, the epidemic seems to have really leveled off and is now declining among those born before 1970, even though they would ALL have been exposed during the ENTIRE period that BSE-contaminated meat was available in the food supply, so that we would expect more cases in that age group than in any other if infection were simply a function of exposure times. By contrast, the cohort born after 1970 will not have had as much exposure to the infective agent, as a group (because some will have been born well after the BSE epidemic started), so we would expect fewer cases than we're seeing in that group. So, the hypothesis goes, it is possible that it's easier to get infected if you're younger than about 15(not sure where that number comes from, but I've seen it a couple of places). At least, that's how I understood the theory; I'm sure that if Snow sees this he will be able to explain it better than I.

Edited: typos.

[newyawker99]

22. Hi orthogonal!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[NYC]

12. Are you thinking of Chronic Wasting Disease?

Possibly?

[AP]

20. I'm not sure. I thought I read in the NYT a while ago something about

the range of experiences for people who suffered from CFS in the 80s and 90s and that a small percentage of them never recovered and ended up in assisted care facilities wearing diapers and confused.

This is just a small piece of info I read a long time ago and filed away, not sure what to make of it, and now that this BSE stuff is coming out I'm rethinking all the stuff I've heard about this and other mystery diseases.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were all categorized as "mysterious" and "unexplainabled" in order to protect the cattle industry (which is, unsuprisingly, the most fuel-intensive food we produce in America -- so it's an important business for the oil industry as well).

[Piltdown13]

8. Too bad they didn't do the proper studies.

Although from the article, it really could go either way (sporadic or vCJD). They make a big deal about her "young" age, but 50 isn't really all that young for sporadic CJD (though I do agree with monitoring all cases in people under 55), while most vCJD patients have been in their twenties and early 30s (the mean age at death is right around 28). Also, it appears that the course of this woman's illness was only about 5-6 months, which IIRC is close to the average with sporadic CJD (vCJD has an average course of about 14 months, last I read). Unfortunately, there is simply no way to know for certain without doing a brain biopsy. I'm also surprised there's no mention in the article (that I noticed) of whether the woman had spent a significant amount of time in the UK or Europe during the height of the BSE epidemic.

[JetCityLiberal]

9. "Mad cow case raises suspicions in elderly deaths" Seattle P-I

This article was in the paper two days ago.

<snip>

But after watching their mother swiftly consumed by a mysterious ailment and die, Henry's children opted for an autopsy.

"I have a lot of brothers and sisters and we all wanted to know for the benefit of the family, was this Alzheimer's?" said Jeanne Giese, Henry's oldest.

The autopsy was conducted shortly after her death in 1997 at age 74. But because of bureaucratic bunglings yet to be explained, the family didn't get the results until early this year -- just a few weeks after the nation's first case of mad cow disease was discovered near Yakima.

The conclusion: Rose Henry suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Now, largely because of that mad cow case, more people are wondering whether their elderly relative might have suffered from CJD -- a degenerative disease of the nervous system -- or its variant, the human form of mad cow disease.

<snip>

About one in a million people come down with traditional CJD each year. Since 1997, 35 people in Washington state have died of traditional CJD, according to state health department records. Less than half of those cases were diagnosed with an autopsy.

Scientists believe people contract variant CJD by eating beef from cows infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

The mutant proteins believed to cause these brain-wasting diseases are called prions.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/166096_rosehenry24.html?searchpag...


Sure has made me think even more about beef.

JetCityLiberal

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

13. Hmmmm. Andover CT.... right across from Plum Island

same area where Lyme Disease first showed up
same area where West Nile first showed up
same area where the first Anthrax showed up

Plum Island is the USDA's Animal Disease Laboratory, which is a cover for the Defense Departments BioChem Warfare Center's live action germ warfare lab out of Ft. Dietrich, MD.


Go figure.

[yltlatl]

16. I found it interesting that...

Craig Unger's book, "House of Bush, House of Saud", claims that one of the pathogens the Reagan admin gave Saddam was a variant of West Nile.

I have to say though, as a CT native, Andover is not exactly right across from Plum Island--it's pretty far inland. Lyme, on the other hand is right on Long Island Sound...

[Kool Kitty]

17. Go to your local bookstore and find

"Lab 257" (the author's name I'm not sure of.) This is one I'm going to pick up this week. It is all about Plum Island. The author documents everything bad that has happened their for the last 30 years. I heard him on Leonard Lopate's show about a month ago, but with all that has been going on, the book slipped my mind. According to the author, there was a biological accident there, too, during a hurricane or nor'easter in the 90's. What he described sounded terrifying. They have been cited for improper storage of biohazards, improper disposal of test "subjects" (mostly birds-they do alot of avian disease research) and he believes that the lab is responsible for West Nile AND Lyme disease. Scary, scary, scary.

[Barkley]

18. The FDA should be sued for negligence - n/t

[treepig]

19. ok, this thread gives me the opportunity again

to warn our southern friends about the related, mad squirrel disease - please, people do not eat squirrel brain!





FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Squirrel brains are a lip-smacking memory for Janet Norris Gates. They were the choicest morsels of the game her father once hunted in Tennessee. ``In our family, we saw it as a prized piece of meat, and if he shared it with you, you were pretty happy. Not that he was stingy,'' said Mrs. Gates, an oral historian in Frankfort, ``but there's just not much of a squirrel brain.'' Now, some people might want to think twice about eating squirrel brains, a backwoods Southern delicacy.

Two Kentucky doctors last month reported a possible link between eating squirrel brains and the rare and deadly human variety of mad-cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, thought to strike one person in 1 million, produces holes in the brain. Symptoms include loss of muscle control and dementia. It may take years, even decades, for symptoms to appear.
Dr. Eric Weisman, a behavioral neurologist who practices in rural western Kentucky, reported in the distinguished British medical journal The Lancet that he has treated 11 people for Creutzfeldt-Jakob in four years, and all had eaten squirrel brains at some time. Six of the victims, ranging in age from 56 to 78, have died.
The normal incidence of the disease in the area should be one case in about 10 years, he said.

http://www.greysquirrel.net/brain.html

[sangha]

21. Yeah, right! Next week they;ll be telling us

we should eat MORE squirrel brains because they're good for you!

:=)

[dax]

23. Now I am gonna be paranoid whenever I get lost...

The disease is so horrible-your brain just deteriorates at an ever accellerating pace-how sad and tragic for both of them just so our meat packers can strip every bit of meat with their machines and feed dead cows to live ones---Mad CONSUMERS- war on cheap profit-grubbing bastards.

[9215]

24. Is she a Republican????

If so this could be a misdiagnosis, hee. :bounce: