Thirteen people who recently underwent neurosurgery in Massachusetts and New Hampshire may have been exposed to a rare and fatal brain condition similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, because of potentially infected surgical instruments.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said on Thursday that five patients treated at Cape Cod Hospital between June and last month are at low risk of infection for the disease, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
On Wednesday, New Hampshire announced eight patients treated at a hospital in New Hampshire may also have been exposed.
INFECTED
Surgical instruments used on the patients may have become infected with the microscopic protein that causes CJD after they were initially used on someone now suspected of having carried the disease.
Normal sterilization procedures at hospitals reduce, but do not eradicate, the protein that causes CJD.
“The risk of CJD exposure from the instrument was first identified by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services after the device was used on a patient in New Hampshire, who was subsequently suspected to have CJD,” the Massachusetts health body said in a press release.
“The CJD risk to the Massachusetts patients is extremely low, as those patients underwent spinal surgery and not brain surgery,” it said.
However, there is no way to test for CJD. The disease can only be confirmed by an autopsy.
INSTRUMENTS
A spokeswoman for Medtro-nic Inc, Cindy Resman, said a surgical kit of instruments it provided was used in the original New Hampshire case and all of the five Massachusetts cases.
She said the instruments were also used on two patients in a third state, but declined to name that state.
“The instruments included a metal reference frame and brace used in surgical navigation during the procedure,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts health body, Anne Roach, said the instruments used on all the patients were routinely cleaned before and after use, but that “the prion that causes sporadic CJD is not completely eradicated by the standard sterilization process mandated at hospitals.”
New Hampshire had warned on Wednesday that eight patients who recently underwent neurosurgery at the Manchester hospital may have been exposed as a result of potentially infected instruments.
AUTOPSY
It said an autopsy was being performed on the original patient to test for the presence of sporadic CJD. Those results have not yet been released.
Officials in both states said there is no risk to the general public and that all 15 patients who may have been exposed have been notified.
Sporadic CJD is similar to mad cow disease, but not linked to beef consumption. It crops up spontaneously without a known cause. There is no known treatment or cure for the condition, which has symptoms including failing memory, personality changes, blindness and sudden jerky movements.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
RSS