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Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. [2] Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. [1] Later in the course of the disease, the cow becomes unable to function normally. [1]
TSEs in non-human mammals include scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle – popularly known as "mad cow disease" – and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk. The variant form of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans is caused by exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy prions. [4] [5] [6]
Cow infected with BSE. The mad cow crisis is a health and socio-economic crisis characterized by the collapse of beef consumption in the 1990s, as consumers became concerned about the transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to humans through the ingestion of this type of meat.
LONDON (Reuters) -The Scottish government on Friday confirmed a case of classical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, at a farm in the southwest of the country, the ...
The United Kingdom was afflicted with an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as "mad cow disease"), and its human equivalent variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), in the 1980s and 1990s. Over four million head of cattle were slaughtered in an effort to contain the outbreak, and 178 people died after contracting ...
In 1992, Canada implemented a national bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) surveillance program. [3] In a 2011 publication, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) was at pains to stress that the "level and design of BSE testing in Canada has always been, and continues to be, in full accordance with the guidelines recommended by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)."
Dark green areas are countries that have confirmed human cases of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and light green are countries that have bovine spongiform encephalopathy cases. The Lancet in 2006 suggested that it may take more than 50 years for vCJD to develop, from their studies of kuru, a similar disease in Papua New Guinea. [54]
Scrapie and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are caused by prions. [19] Prions were determined to be the infectious agent because transmission is difficult to prevent with heat, radiation and disinfectants, the agent does not evoke any detectable immune response, and it has a long incubation period of between 18 months and 5 years. [20]