Mad cow infection not often fatal

Prepared Foods, March, 2005

Persons infected with Mad Cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) disease will not always show symptoms. A 2003 study in the U.K. examined tissue from appendectomies and found a higher prevalence of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) than expected from clinical data alone. While the results indicated approximately 3,800 Brits could test positive, there has been a comparatively small number of 148 reported deaths from vCJD since the condition was first seen in 1995.

Scientists believe the large difference between potential and actual deaths is that many infected persons do not go on to develop the clinical disease. There has been a decline in the number of reported cases since 2000. An online January 2005 article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface suggests there will be approximately 70 future cases of the disease directly resulting from eating BSE-infected beef. The article also reported that deaths could rise as high as 600, although the researchers felt this was unlikely. www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk