Rat Faced
11-13-2004, 03:03 PM
No one is immune to the human form of mad cow disease, variant CJD, new research suggests today.
Some people whose genetic make-up normally acts as a barrier against infection may ultimately develop a different and so-far unrecognised type of disease, it is claimed.
Scientists have shown that individuals with a pair of genes known as MM – about a third of the population – acquire vCJD relatively easily.
No one with a different paring, VV, has been known to suffer the disease.
Then in August it emerged that a patient from a mixed MV genetic group had been infected with vCJD from contaminated blood, without showing any symptoms. Just over half the population has the MV pairing.
The news sparked fears of a mad cow disease “timebomb” in the population, with thousands of people unwittingly carrying the brain disease on a long incubation fuse.
Source (http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3749982)
This is worrying.
The UK probably has less to worry about than the USA in the long term, as we banned a lot of products that could be contaminated with BSE years ago, whereas many of these products are still sold in the USA despite numerous cases of BSE there in recent years.
Still... wish i didnt have all those McDonalds 10 years ago :unsure:
Some people whose genetic make-up normally acts as a barrier against infection may ultimately develop a different and so-far unrecognised type of disease, it is claimed.
Scientists have shown that individuals with a pair of genes known as MM – about a third of the population – acquire vCJD relatively easily.
No one with a different paring, VV, has been known to suffer the disease.
Then in August it emerged that a patient from a mixed MV genetic group had been infected with vCJD from contaminated blood, without showing any symptoms. Just over half the population has the MV pairing.
The news sparked fears of a mad cow disease “timebomb” in the population, with thousands of people unwittingly carrying the brain disease on a long incubation fuse.
Source (http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3749982)
This is worrying.
The UK probably has less to worry about than the USA in the long term, as we banned a lot of products that could be contaminated with BSE years ago, whereas many of these products are still sold in the USA despite numerous cases of BSE there in recent years.
Still... wish i didnt have all those McDonalds 10 years ago :unsure: