Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms fourth death due to the rare and fatal brain disorder associated with meat intake from cows with BSE or bovine spongiform encephalopathy better known as "mad cow disease."
As per CDC, state and federal authorities are now investigating the fourth case of death from the disease in the United States. It is the first death in Texas. The victim was born and raised in the Middle East.
The victim traveled around the Middle East and Europe where he likely got infected. The three previous cases of U.S. deaths were related to an infection that got outside of the United States. One was in Saudi Arabia and two were in the UK. The CDC maintains that the death of the patient does not provide evidence that the United States is exposed to variant CJD.
This Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) variant has been discovered in 1996 with majority of its cases coming from the UK. There is no cure for this disease and it has always been fatal. Currently, the disease can only be diagnosed after the death of the patient through brain tissue or spinal fluid tests, making even a probable diagnosis very difficult. The disease is not easily spread, though millions of cows have been infected; only 177 human cases were reported.
People infected with the mad cow disease experience symptoms that mimic some neurological diseases including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and difficulty in walking or unsteadiness. Variant CJD could be difficult to diagnose because in some cases, patients already have pre-existing psychiatric problems such as anxiety or depression but those who end up positive are completely mute and immobile at the time of their death.
The World Health Organization (WHO) changed the status of the United States for BSE in 2013, placing it under the negligible category with the lowest risk because of the country's safeguards including random cattle tests and an FDA prohibition of mammalian-derived proteins in feeds. Infected cattle are rare in the U.S. The last reported case of a dairy cow positive of mad cow disease was in California in 2012. Previous cases happened in the early 2000s in Alabama, Texas and Washington. Meanwhile, about 184,500 cows contracted the mad cow disease in the UK since its discovery in 1986.
"Based on self-reporting in the U.S. that's not based on anything that's real scientific," senior staff scientist Michael Hansen of Consumers Union said. He believes that the international organization rating has issues and that government agencies are not really working enough to protect the people from infected food.
