- An epidemic of a deer and elk disease is sweeping across
North America with echoes of Britain's continuing mad cow disaster. Jennifer
Cooke reports that unusual deaths in hunters and venison eaters are under
scrutiny.
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- When the first report of the cluster of deaths from an
extremely rare brain disease was reported two years ago, researchers and
public health officials around the world took note. Three "unusually"
young people, according to the authors of a 2001 report in the Archives
of Neurology, two just 28 and the other 30, had died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease.
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- But it was what they ate that attracted most attention.
Two of them were hunters and the third, the daughter of one. All had been
known to eat deer and elk.
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- This year's February 21 issue of the US Mortality and
Morbidity Weekly Report told of three men who had taken part in the same
game feasts throughout the 1980s, all of whom died of a progressive neurological
disorder, two in 1993 and the third in 1999.
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- Two of the deaths were initially confirmed as CJD, but
retesting last year ruled out one CJD diagnosis. However, the report admitted
to a less than ideal investigation going back two decades and ended with
the caveat: "Limited epidemiologic investigations cannot rule out
the possibility that CWD might play a role in causing human illness."
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- Last month yet another odd cluster of CJD deaths was
presented - at the annual general meeting of the American Academy of Neurology
in Hawaii. All three were deer and elk hunters, two hunted together and
lived in the same town, in Washington state. The third was from Alaska,
presumably unrelated. "We are trying to raise the issue," Ali
Samii, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Washington
Medical School, and one of the authors of the report, told the conference.
Lifestyle questions were paramount for doctors suspecting a prion disease,
he said. They should not merely ask about travel to Europe but about "what
they [patients] do". And what they eat.
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- Excerpted from an article originally published May 14,
2003.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591785506.html
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