- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Swiss
researchers said on Thursday they found infectious proteins in the muscle
tissue of patients who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and said
the finding may suggest the rare and fatal brain disease could be passed
on during standard surgery.
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- The study, published in this week's issue of the New
England Journal of Medicine, also raises the question of whether mad cow
disease N bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) N might be passed on in
muscle tissue and not simply in brain, lymph and spleen tissue.
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- Dr Adriano Aguzzi, of the University Hospital of Zurich,
led the study, in which the researchers examined the tissues of patients
who died of CJD, Alzheimer's disease and other causes.
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- BSE, CJD and related diseases, including a new form of
CJD caused by eating infected beef products, are caused by an infectious
version of a protein called a prion.
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- There is no cure for any of the diseases and they are
always fatal. BSE decimated Britain's cattle population and has spread
to several countries, including Switzerland.
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- CJD occurs naturally in about one in a million people
and its cause is unknown. The new variant of CJD, called vCJD, has been
diagnosed in 139 people, according to the World Health Organization.
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- Most cases of CJD have no known cause N they are sporadic.
Up to 10 percent can be caused by a gene mutation and about 10 percent
are caused by the use of infected brain, eye or nerve tissue in surgical
operations.
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- The only way to confirm CJD is a brain autopsy, but experts
are trying to develop a blood test. Animals can be tested for BSE using
samples from the tonsils.
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- Aguzzi's team examined 36 patients with what was believed
to be sporadic CJD who died between 1996 and 2002.
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- They found prions in all brain tissue and in 10 of 28
spleen specimens. They also found prions in eight of 32 muscle samples.
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- "Our findings arouse concern about the possibility
of iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment) transmission of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease," they wrote.
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- They stressed that they had not shown the muscle tissue
was infectious and said perhaps the Swiss samples were unique in some way.
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- But they noted that patients who had undergone surgery
of any kind had a slightly higher risk of CJD.
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- "Some allegedly sporadic cases may in reality have
an iatrogenic origin," they wrote.
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- "Our results suggest that muscle and lymph-node
biopsies can be used as diagnostic procedures for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease," they added.
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