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Re: E-M:/ A human story related to CWD
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Enviro-Mich message from "Chuck Cubbage" <charles.cubbage@comcast.net>
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Gary, et al, This website has some stats on it (see below) The figures
are hard to come by given the rarity of the disease I copied the info for
your convience.
Regards,
Chuck
http://www.cjdfoundation.org/cjdisease.html
CJD INFORMATION
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Introduction
Prion diseases are a group of rare, invariably fatal brain disorders which
occur both in humans and certain animals. They first came to public
attention in the mid 1980s in the form of the BSE epidemic in the United
Kingdom. BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is a prion disease in
cattle. Tissue from infected animals may have contaminated cattle feed,
leading to the silent spread of the BSE epidemic. There is also a theory
that BSE came from feed contaminated with scrapie, the long established
sheep prion disease. Inevitably, concern over whether BSE could pass to
humans mounted.
In humans the best known of the prion diseases is Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
(CJD), which reportedly affects around one person per million per year. In
the United States this translates to 250-300 new cases per year. It is well
known that CJD is very difficult to diagnose leading to speculation that the
one case per million report may be incorrect. Most of the cases are
"classical" or "sporadic" CJD (sCJD), occurring for no, as yet, known
reason. The sporadic form accounts for approximately 85% of the cases, the
familial form approximately 15%. There have also been a few cases which have
occurred from contamination via medical procedures; this type is known as
iatrogenic or Acquired CJD. Finally over the last few years, another type of
Acquired CJD called variant (vCJD) has been identified in young people. vCJD
has been linked to ingestion of beef tainted with BSE (bovine spongiform
encephalopathy), most cases have occurred in the United Kingdom.
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