UK confirms human mad cow disease
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from March 1997.
Brought to you by
In its regular update on cases of CreutzfeldtJakob Disease (CJD), the health department said there were 13 confirmed cases of the new variant of CJD and three suspected cases.
The brain-wasting CJD occurs regularly in the population, affecting about one in a million. It is always fatal. A new variant was identified last year and government scientists said a likely source was eating beef products infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease).
The figures, put together by the National CJD Surveillance Unit, indicate a total of 127 cases of CJD in Britain last year.
