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I ate A lot of U.K. beef in the past so am I at risk for vCJD Mad cow?
3 Answers
- Anonymous7 months agoFavorite Answer
You could be carrying the prions that cause the variant form of CJD that kills people in the prime of life. That depends on when you ate UK beef. There was a specific period in the 1980-90s when the British herd had an epidemic of BSE and was an unsafe food source, until the cull was completed. BSE spread to herds all across Europe. The ensuing delay in reducing the quantity of infected meat in the food supply chain resulted in it being stocked on market shelves internationally. The first known fatality from vCJD in 1995 was a 19-year old male who had been a vegetarian for much of his life. As of early this year, there have only been 229 cases of vCJD in the world (only 4 in the USA) - all fatal.
If you ate UK beef in the 1980-1996 time window (or beef from certain other herds), you probably are subject to prohibitions against donating blood, to prevent the spread of the prions. Just because you may be carrying the prions doesn't mean you're at significant risk of developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It turns out that there are only two groups of carriers that are likely to develop it - those with one of two particular forms of one protein found in the brain. Those with the "M" form of this protein who were exposed to the BSE prions are likely to die in an early wave some seven or more years after infection. Those with the "V" form will not develop illness until considerably later. The first "V" case appeared in 2014.