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PRION DISEASE-ACCIDENTAL LAB EXPOSURE

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Tabitha111 View Drop Down
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    Posted: July 07 2020 at 10:30am

I find these articles fascinating. I gave up eating beef many years ago because of what I read about Prion disease.- Have not regretted it in the least.~~Tabitha


[Byline: Rachael Rettner]

PRION DISEASE: CJD 2010 ACCIDENTAL LAB EXPOSURE CASE REPORT, FRANCE

*******************************************************************

Date: 3 Jul 2020

Source: Live Science [edited]

https://www.livescience.com/mad-cow-disease-lab-accident-vCJD.html



A young lab technician in France developed a rare and fatal brain

disease after she was accidentally exposed to prions, the infectious

proteins that cause "mad cow disease," according to a new report of

the case.


The accident happened in May 2010, when the technician was 24 years

old and working in a prion research lab, according to the report,

published Wed 1 Jul 2020 in The New England Journal of Medicine. She

worked with samples of brain tissue from mice that had been infected

with a form of mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform

encephalopathy (BSE).


While she was using forceps to handle the samples, she accidentally

stabbed her thumb through a double pair of latex gloves, enough to

break the skin and cause bleeding, the report said.

More than 7 years

later, in November 2017, the woman began to experience a "burning

pain" in her neck and right shoulder, which later spread to the right

side of her body. One year later, in November 2018, doctors examined a

sample of her cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which appeared normal. But by

January 2019, she began experiencing symptoms of depression,

anxiousness, memory impairment, and visual hallucinations. In March

2019, samples of her CSF and blood tested positive for variant

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a fatal brain condition that can

take years to show up after exposure to "mad cow disease" prions. The

woman died in June 2019, 19 months after her symptoms 1st appeared.


Only a few hundred cases of vCJD have ever been reported, and most

were tied to consumption of contaminated beef (from cows infected with

mad cow disease) in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, Live

Science previously reported.

The disease results from prion proteins

that fold abnormally, leading to lesions in a person's brain. There is

strong evidence that the prions that cause mad cow disease also caused

the U.K. outbreak of vCJD in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (It is important to note

that "classic" Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a related but separate

condition from vCJD. Classic CJD was 1st diagnosed in 1920, and can be

inherited or occur sporadically, and is not linked to consumption of

contaminated beef.)


Since the woman was born around the start of the BSE cattle outbreak,

it is possible that she could have contracted vCJD through consumption

of contaminated beef, but this scenario is unlikely, according to the

report authors, from Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris, the public

hospital system in Paris.


On average, vCJD takes about 10 years to show up after exposure to

contaminated food, and the last 2 patients with vCJD in France and the

U.K. died in 2013 and 2014, the report said. So, it's possible that

the woman developed the disease from exposure to lab materials

contaminated with prions. Studies in animals have shown that injection

into the skin is an effective route of transmission for these prions.

-----------------------

The full article can be accessed in the New England Journal of

Medicine (NEJM) at

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2000687

'A man who does not think and plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door.'
--Confucius

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