The deadly human form of mad cow disease, vCJD, may have infected far more people than previously thought, suggests a new study.
The assumption that most people are genetically shielded from the devastating disease could be wrong, said the research published on Friday. But it cautions that the evidence for this remains sketchy.
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Two out of three
But the new study, which appears in the British Medical Journal, places a cloud of doubt over this assumption.
Researchers led by James Ironside at the University of Edinburgh, UK, carried out a DNA analysis of three appendix tissue samples found to carry the mutant prion protein.
The tissues were part of a vast earlier study in which UK labs screened 12,600 appendices and tonsils for the protein in order to get an idea of the spread of vCJD.
Ironside's team say they were extremely surprised to find that two out of their three samples, which tested positive for vCJD, came from people with the VV variant. Neither individual, both aged in their twenties at time of surgery between 1996 and 1999, has the symptoms of vCJD.
Incubation time
But the paper warns against dramatism. It notes that only these two VV samples have so far been identified, and just because a VV individual has the protein does not mean that he or she will go on to develop vCJD.
On the other hand, no one knows how long it takes for vCJD to incubate, which raises the possibility that VV individuals may fall sick years from now. In classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which occurs in older people, this can take up to 30 years.
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I was in the UK far too much in the mid-80s and ate meat there.... I don't like this report.
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