The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) informed, this Thursday (11), that it received two patients with suspected Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (EBB), popularly known as “Mal da Vaca Louca”.
The patients are hospitalized at the hospital created for the Covid-19 pandemic at the Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectious Diseases (INI/Fiocruz), in Rio de Janeiro.
Fiocruz did not provide details about the identity of the patients, such as gender and age or the location where the infection could have occurred.
What is mad cow disease?
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, official name of “mad cow disease”, is a degenerative, chronic and fatal disease that affects the Central Nervous System of cattle and buffaloes.
The disease, which has no cure or treatment, causes behavioral changes and can be confused with other diseases that affect the Central Nervous System of animals, such as rabies, intoxication, Babesiosis, among others.
Among the main symptoms of mad cow are:
- nervousness
- Seizure
- Fear
- teeth grinding
- Hypersensitivity to sound, touch, light
- Ataxia
It is transmissible to humans, causing a similar disease, the new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).
How did mad cow disease come about?
The disease is believed to have emerged in the mid-1980s, when there was an outbreak in the UK, although there is no scientific proof of its origin.
In the late 1990s, some countries in Europe faced an outbreak of mad cow cases because of the consumption, by other animals, of processed feed from cattle affected by the disease.
At the same time, the first cases of vCJD were registered and the first case in the world of probable blood transmission of the variant was confirmed by the United Kingdom and was caused by a blood transfusion by an infected donor who had no symptoms.
According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, no case of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant has been confirmed in Brazil. The injury has already been registered in countries like the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Italy, Canada and the United States.
What is the cause of the disease?
It is caused by the infective form of a protein (prion) present in the remains of cattle and buffalo that manifested the disease.
Consumption of prion-contaminated food is the main route of transmission. Healthy animals can contract the disease by eating foods that contain bone meal, meat and carcasses of infected animals.
Therefore, it is prohibited to feed cattle, buffaloes, goats and sheep with products of animal origin.
The Brazilian system of raising cattle, mainly for fattening, is almost entirely on pasture and the food supplement used is based on vegetable protein, such as soy, corn and cottonseed.
(With information from Murillo Ferrari, CNN)
Reference: CNN Brasil
