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| Friday, 23 June 2006 12:01 | | BNN: British Nursing News Online · www.bnn-online.co.uk
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Researchers have discovered clues about how long mad cow disease (BSE) can lurk in the human body before it develops into vCJD after studying a disease linked to cannibalism.
The University College London study found it could take 50 years for vCJD, the human form of the disease, to develop after studying Papa New Guineans with a related condition – kuru disease, which is contracted through cannibalism.
Like vCJD, kuru disease is a linked to mutated proteins called prions. It reached epidemic proportions is some Papa New Guinea communities where eating dead relatives as a mark of respect was ritual practice until it was banned in the 1950s.
In the study, 11 patients with kuru were identified between July 1996 to June 2004, with the last one born in 1959.
The researchers believe the incubation period for BSE prions in humans could be even longer than that seen in kuru as infection between different species usually takes longer to develop than one passed within the same species.
Professor John Collinge, who led the study, said vCJD patients identified so far "could represent a distinct genetic subpopulation with unusually short incubation periods for BSE".
He said a human BSE epidemic might have a number of phases, and added: "Recent estimates of the size of the vCJD epidemic based on uniform genetic susceptibility could be substantial underestimations."
An editorial in the Lancet, which puvblished the findings, stated: "The eventual size of the vCJD epidemic remains uncertain.
"The number of infected individuals is still unknown.
"By investigating kuru, the only known example of a major epidemic of a prion disease, we will begin to narrow our present uncertainties about vCJD.
"Any belief that vCJD incidence has peaked and that we are now through the worst of this sinister disease must now be treated with extreme scepticism."
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