NR ASDB
AU Meikle,J.
TI Girl, 13, could be youngest BSE case. Unconfirmed victim monitored by doctors and government
QU The Guardian, November 23, 1999
IA http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,106729,00.html
PT Zeitungsartikel
VT
Girl, 13, could be youngest BSE case.
Unconfirmed victim monitored by doctors and government
James Meikle Tuesday November 23, 1999 The Guardian (UK)
A girl of 13 may be the youngest person to have contracted the human form of BSE, the fatal disease linked to eating infected beef, in a case being anxiously monitored by doctors and government officials. The girl is showing possible signs of the condition. So far the youngest of 48 people to have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was 16.
She was under a year old when the cattle disease was first formally identified in 1986. Parts of cows that might be infective were banned from the human food chain in 1989.
Her case, if confirmed, would give a sharp new edge to questions about the infective dose of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent, the length of incubation in humans and the rigour of hygiene controls before March 1996, when the then Conservative government finally conceded a probable causal link between the disease in humans and eating beef in the mid to late-1980s - nearly a year after the first victim had died.
News of the girl comes at a bad time politically, given the row over beef exports to France and the proposed lifting of the ban on beef on the bone imposed by Labour two years ago. The inquiry into how the government handled the BSE crisis until 1996 has been examining whether ministers, officials and advisers underestimated the risks for years.
The health department and its unit monitoring progress of the disease refuse to discuss individual cases. They have previously pointed out that far from all suspected cases turn out to be variant CJD. But the disclosure will prompt questions as to whether the girl was infected from food she ate as a baby.
The Tories introduced food controls 10 years ago after a long argument about whether there was sufficient evidence to justify concerns that people may catch the condition from beef products. For years it was justified as purely a precautionary measure.
Mechanically recovered meat, machined off animal bones and often used in cheap beefburgers, sausages and pies, was banned only in late 1995, but scientists now believe it was particularly risky material.
The government last year introduced new filter treatments to reduce the risk of people catching the condition through blood transfusions. It recently banned reuse of equipment used in eye tests and is still considering whether it should enforce the use of disposable equipment in a range of other surgical procedures.
Human BSE victims confirmed since the death of Stephen Churchill, 19, in May 1995 have been aged between 16 and 52 when the disease became evident. Victims have continued living for between a few months and more than three years. The problem for doctors and the government is that so little is still known about BSE and how it is transmitted to man.
There is still no incontrovertible proof that it is, but even if the hypothesis is correct it could be three years before anyone can predict if hundreds or thousands will eventually die.
Research on cannibals in Papua New Guinea and the death rate among people infected with a similar condition contracted through growth hormone implants suggest incubation periods could run from 4.5 to 30 years, with an average of 13 years.
IN Eine 13-jährige Britin leidet vermutlich an der neuen Variante der Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Krankheit.
ZR 0
SP englisch