Human form of mad cow disease on the increase

LONDON -- Deaths from the human form of mad cow disease have more than quadrupled in the UK since 1995, according to a new study.

The research into variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) follows a report concluding that 12 European Union countries could be harboring the cattle ailment Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), with which it has been linked.

The study on the scale of CJD in the UK, published in The Lancet medical journal, reveals that in the first six months of this year the brain-wasting disease killed 14 people, the same number as for the whole of last year. In 1995 the figure was just three.

It also shows number of reported cases of the illness has increased by an average of 23 percent a year in the UK since 1994.

"The absolute number of cases in the UK is still low, but such an increase should be a matter of concern," the scientists, including Dr Robert Will, head of the government's CJD surveillance unit, said in the journal.

"Given that further cases with onsets in 1999 and 2000 will probably be identified in future months, the number of onsets clearly increases each year," the scientists said.

Experts are struggling to predict the scale of the epidemic or when it will reach its peak because they don't know the incubation period of the disease.

It is thought could lay dormant for up to 20 years without being detected.

The disease can only be confirmed by examining the brains of victims after they have died and scientists have only been able to establish the onset of the infection by asking the victims' relatives when symptoms first occurred.

It is not clear how long after becoming infected a person shows symptoms, and the lag between becoming sick and dying has varied.

What is certain is that as of June 30, a total of 75 cases of the disease had been identified in the UK -- 69 of those people have died.

The discovery of a probable link between CJD and BSE provoked an international ban on British beef which crippled the country's beef industry in the late 1990s and provoked a political row within Europe.

Since the British outbreak, which affected some 180,000 cattle, about 200 cases of BSE have been found in Portugal and smaller numbers in France, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland.

This month European Union scientists concluded that mad cow disease could be present in three countries where it has not so far been detected, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The European Commission stressed the assessment related only to whether BSE might be present in live cattle, not to any risk to humans through food consumption.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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