article_snippet.sent: The potential difficulty in making the clinical diagnosis in many patients with vCJD and the delay with which mad cow disease is first suspected raises the concern that vCJD can be missed,' wrote the researchers.
article_snippet.sent: WHAT IS MAD COW DISEASE?
article_snippet.sent: MAD COW DISEASE is a fatal neurological disease in cattle caused by an abnormal form of a prion protein that destroys the brain and spinal cord.
article_snippet.sent: MAD COW DISEASE was first identified in Great Britain in 1986, although research suggests that the first infections may have spontaneously occurred in the 1970s.
article_snippet.sent: The disease is believed to be spread by feeding calves meat and bone meal contaminated with BSE or scrapie, a prion disease in sheep.
article_snippet.sent: Illnesses similar to BSE also have been seen in elk, deer and exotic zoo animals.
article_snippet.sent: There were 36,000 diagnosed cases of mad cow disease in Great Britain in 1992, during that height of a mad cow epidemic there.
article_snippet.sent: There has never been a case of vCJD that did not have a history of exposure within a country where the cattle disease, BSE, was occurring.
article_snippet.sent: It is believed that the persons who have developed vCJD became infected through the persons who have developed vCJD consumption of cattle products contaminated with the agent of BSE or in three cases, each reported from the United Kingdom, through receipt of blood from an asymptomatic, infected donor.