The first probable human case of mad cow disease in Taiwan was listed posthumously on Saturday, following the death in May of a man who had symptoms of the fatal brain-wasting illness.
The listing was made after officials and experts on a Department of Health (DOH) panel on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) held a meeting to determine whether the man had died from the disease as the result of eating infected beef.
“We believe it is very likely that the man who died in May this year contracted the disease during his stay in the United Kingdom,” the DOH said in a press statement. “We cannot rule out the possibility that he ate infected beef during that time.”
Scientists believe that many years after eating cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, humans can develop symptoms of new variant CJD (vCJD), also known as human mad cow disease.
The 36-year-old man had lived in the UK between 1989 and 1997, when mad cow disease was at its peak in that country. He began to show vCJD symptoms, including memory loss and hypersomnia, in 2008. Doctors reported the case to the Centers for Disease Control in March last year.
As his family refused to give doctors permission to perform an autopsy, the department could not list the patient as a confirmed case of vCJD. His body has since been cremated.
Though the cause of death could not be determined by means of an autopsy, it was an extremely likely case of vCJD, based on the man’s symptoms, travel history and the results of magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalograms, the DOH said.
According to the CJD advisory panel, it was unlikely that the patient contracted the disease in Taiwan.
“His death could be counted as an imported case of vCJD and unlikely to pose any threat to Taiwan’s disease control network,” the DOH statement said.
Citing its tracking records, the DOH said the man had donated blood to two patients 10 years ago.
“Neither of them has contracted the disease,” the statement said, adding that precautionary measures had been taken to prevent any spread of the disease during the time the man was hospitalized in Taiwan.
The WHO says CJD is a fatal human degenerative condition characterized by progressive brain dysfunction and is categorized into four forms — sporadic, familial, iatrogenic and variant.
The UK Department of Health has said vCJD differs from CJD in that the former is more likely to strike younger people.
Since 1997 when the DOH set up a CJD reporting and monitoring system, 436 suspected CJD or vCJD cases have been reported in Taiwan, DOH figures show. Of that number, 246 were listed as possible or extremely possible cases of sporadic or familial forms of CJD, five were confirmed as traditional forms of CJD and one was listed as probable vCJD, DOH tallies showed.
The others were ruled out as possible cases of CJD.
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