Calm urged over CJD case

Fears of a new wave of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) – the human version of 'mad cow' disease – have been raised following the discovery of the first case identified in a person with different genetic makeup to all previous cases.

To this point, all of those who have died in Britain of the fatal brain condition have possessed a specific genetic profile that is carried by four in ten people. However a 39-year-old woman who died recently of CJD has been found to have a different genetic type.

If she is found to have variant CJD linked to the consumption of infected beef, then it could signal the spread of the disease to a second genetic group for whom there is a longer incubation period, following the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) cattle crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.

Professor Chris Higgins, chair of the government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, moved to reassure the public: "There's certainly no need to panic. This could simply be a case of sporadic CJD, in which case the genetic makeup is irrelevant.

"At the moment there isn't enough evidence to conclude one way or the other," he added.

So far, variant CJD has caused 114 confirmed deaths, with a further 47 deaths thought most probably due to the disease.

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