CJD study fails to provide answers
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Your support makes all the difference.Scientists are no closer to knowing how many people will die from human mad cow disease, despite the release today of a study aimed at predicting its effects.
Scientists are no closer to knowing how many people will die from human mad cow disease, despite the release today of a study aimed at predicting its effects.
No signs of variant CJD were found by Government-funded experts in 3,000 tonsil and appendix specimens removed in operations since the 1980s. However they warned the results should not be seen as an all-clear.
The scientists, based at the CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh and at Derriford hospital in Plymouth, said these were the first findings from a survey that will eventually examine tissue from around 18,000 samples.
At a news conference at the Department of Health Professor Liam Donaldson, the government's chief medical officer, said: "The fact that no positives have been found is welcome news, but these early results should not be taken as an indication of an 'all clear'.
"The methods of analysis used on the small sample of specimens have some limitations. In addition we do not know at what point in the incubation period tissues such as tonsils or appendices would turn positive, how long the incubation period would be, or even whether any individuals who were found positive would necessarily go on to develop the disease."
Variant CJD emerged in 1995 as a previously unrecognised form of the human brain disease, and to date has claimed 53 confirmed victims in the UK.
Most experts now accept that the variant CJD is a human version of the cattle disease BSE and acquired from eating contaminated beef.
The majority of infections are thought to have occurred in the late 1980s before the introduction of controls to prevent contaminated meat entering the human food chain.
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