While research on the cause continues, it's been recognized that BSE spreads among animal populations when livestock is fed meat and bone material from already infected animals. The BSE crises in the UK through the s and s were thought to have started when sheep infected with scrapie a sheep disease not transmittable to humans were fed to cattle. The practice of feeding animal parts to other livestock is now completely banned in the European Union and UK, and partially banned in the US and Canada.
Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease CJD is a rare disorder that causes deterioration of mental function and movement in human beings. A variant form of CJD abbreviated vCJD , first identified in , is thought to be contracted through eating products from BSE-contaminated cattle, or more specifically, meat that came in contact with infected tissue including the brain, spinal cord fluid, tonsils, or intestines during slaughter.
Because this is the most likely route of infection, governments have initiated prevention methods to detect and destroy BSE-carrying cattle, disallowed cattle that can no longer walk in the food supply, and prevent the organs from cattle of over 30 months of age from entering the food supply, since younger cattle aren't known to exhibit symptoms of BSE.
Additionally, vCJD may also be spread through blood during transfusions. As a result, blood banks have worked to minimize risk of transmission through this route. You're correct in noting that the incubation period for vCJD seems rather long, estimated currently at four to six years. There are varying predictions of what this could mean for countries that have experienced BSE outbreaks or vCJD cases already.
But studies aren't yet reliable enough to give firm estimates of the impact that might be expected from known BSE outbreaks during the s and s.
Unfortunately, vCJD has no cure, and currently, no agreed-upon treatment. More research is needed not only to develop treatment options, but also to understand the disease itself. While this may seem worrisome, there are plenty of laws and guidelines intended to keep gelatin manufacturing safe.
Gelatin, which is derived from collagen, is a widely-used animal-derived product. Beyond being found in a particularly colorful jiggly dessert, gelatin is frequently used in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
Gelatin is indeed made from skin and bones of cattle, as you mention in your question, but the primary raw material for modern gelatin production is actually pig skin. Pigs are not currently known to be affected by BSE or any similar disease. For cow-based gelatin, the Food and Drug Administration FDA has guidelines in place that ban gelatin from being made from high-risk cow parts.
Additionally, high-risk cow parts and products are not allowed to be imported into the US. Aside from cow- and pig-based gelatin products, there are also fish-based and completely vegetarian versions of gelatin. It's also generally thought that the actual production of gelatin eliminates risk of BSE, though studies are still being carried out.
From there it's insanity, coma, and death as your brain turns to jello. And despite what you have heard, there is not always room for jello. The thing is, there's uncertainty about what causes these kinds of diseases, called as a class transmissible spongiform encephalopathies Latinate etymologies that basically mean "you catch this thing that fills your brain with holes". True, many scientists agree with Stanely Prusiner , a physician at the University of California at San Francisco, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his assertion that TSEs are caused by misshaped proteins found in mammalian brains.
He called them prions pree-ons, supposed to stand for "proteinacious infectious agents". Every brain has them, goes the theory, but sometimes they are somehow altered, and this new form changes all the normal ones into the bad ones And if you eat meat infected with the mutated prion protein, like beef or the brains of your deceased relatives, you get the TSE. Some researchers, though, don't buy it. Prions don't act according to Koch's postulates , the rules for determining whether a microbe causes a disease.
You don't always find prions in infected tissue, for example, and sometimes when you do find it there isn't as much as you'd expect. Later, dementia symptoms appear. These can include serious declines in memory, thinking, and behavior. A Belfast man who suffered variant CJD — the human form of mad cow disease — has died, 10 years after he first became ill.
Caused by misformed proteins called prions that affect the brain, in both cows and humans the disease can be dormant for a long time before symptoms begin to show. Some studies indicate that it might be possible for symptoms to develop up to 50 years after infection. This disease process may take from two weeks to six months. Similar symptoms may develop in humans: muscle spasms, lack of muscle control, worsening problems with memory.
It turns out both diseases involve something called a prion protein. In theory, CJD can be transmitted from an affected person to others, but only through an injection or consuming infected brain or nervous tissue.
Common methods to eliminate disease-causing organisms in food, like heat, do not affect prions. The current risk for infection with the BSE agent among travelers to Europe is extremely small, if it exists at all. The median age at death from vCJD in the United Kingdom has been 28 years and almost all cases have been in persons under age 55 years.
Gelatin can cause an unpleasant taste, feelings of heaviness in the stomach, bloating, heartburn, and belching. Gelatin can also cause allergic reactions. In some people, allergic reactions have been severe enough to damage the heart and cause death.
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