Cases of rare brain disease have been reported in Marin County
One of the women in Marin County has died and another is reported to be sick with the degenerative brain disorder of mad cow disease, i.e. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but there is no infectious case and no public threat. Moreover, the Marin County Health Department reported on Thursday that mad cow disease is not the cause of death of 59 year old woman from San Rafael.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease shows buildup of damaged proteins in the brain and result in the early dementia. This disease becomes fatal within one year of diagnosis.
Lab test revealed on Thursday showed that one of the cases is not the result of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and the same thing has been shown by the experts in the disease.
“We have no evidence that suggests a causal linkage between the suspect cases nor is there any evidence to suggest a risk in food supply,” the state public health department said in a statement.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is rare type of disorder as there are only 300 cases of the disease in U.S. annually and 30 in California as reported by the experts of the disease at University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford. Many of the cases are either come up suddenly or are inherited. Approximately, 1% of the cases are “acquired” Creutzfeldt-Jakob resulted from an infection caused by bovine spongiform encephalitis, or mad-cow disease. Most important causes of the infection can be blood transfusion or eating infected beef or tissue transplant from a person, who has the same disorder.
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