Symptoms Of Mad Cow Disease

diseasesymptoms — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:33:10 +0000

There is much confusion surrounding the so-called mad cow disease. To understand exactly the size of the problem we should be able to answer the questions:

a) How the cows get sick?

b) What do the animals eat?

c) How the infection is transmitted to humans?

d) In what report is the disease caused in humans with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?

Scrapie – is a contagious disease of sheep caused by a prion. This is spongiform encephalopathy and it can be transmitted to cattle (causing the mad cow disease) through meat and bone meal derived from sick sheep. This is why we are looking for an agreement to ban animal meal.

BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or mad cow disease – is the disease of cattle caused by a prion that remains latent for a long (four to six years) before manifest as symptoms of mad cow disease: aggression, abnormal gait, weight loss.

The prion, a pathological protein, accumulates in the nervous system (brain and spinal cord), making it increasingly spongy. It has been identified for the first time in Britain in 1985 (over 180,000 cases in the next fifteen years). In 2000 the only countries where BSE had not yet been reported were Finland, Austria, Sweden, Italy and Greece, while in other European countries ranged from a few cases (Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland , Belgium) to hundreds (Ireland, France, Portugal). Usually the disease does not occur before twenty months of life of the cattle and was also found in cats, tigers, lions, pumas, cheetahs and wild ruminants bred in zoos. Some animals, like the hamsters, are immune.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease – From the flesh of cattle (small intestine, spinal cord, lymph nodes, tonsils, eyes and brain) can apparently be transmitted to humans (in what is erroneously called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, disease whose only point in common with BSE being caused by the same pathogen, the prion). The first human cases were recorded in Britain in 1994 and confirmed cases in the next six years were just under a hundred. The disease is not transmitted to humans simply by eating infected meat: there must be indeed a genetic predisposition and 62% of the population is immune from the contagion. Only those persons who have endogenous prion protein with a certain shape (the presence of methionine at position 129 of the chain of amino acids) can be attacked by prions exogenous (coming from sick cattle).

In the United States was discovered an antibody (FabD18) able to block infection and to eliminate prions, then preventive and therapeutic functions.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – is a disease caused by a prion, a protein pathology, which remains latent in the long (even decades) before manifesting with progressive dementia, loss of muscle control and abnormal involuntary movements. It is rare (one case per million per year) and occurs in 95% of cases in the sporadic form, and only 5% is attributable to the familial form genetically based.

The first form affects adults between forty and sixty-five years of age (young adults treated with growth hormone have not yet synthesized, but derived from human tissues, or contaminated during medical procedures such as corneal transplant) and evolution of slower familial form. The first symptoms of mad cow disease are memory loss, visual disturbances and dizziness, mental deficits, apathy. Death occurs after a period ranging from three to twelve months.

Disease Symptoms » Mad Cow

Symptoms Of Mad Cow Disease