The incidence of BSE is not decreasing as expected, according to the latest figures released by the Department of Agriculture. The monthly figures published yesterday showed there were seven cases confirmed, bringing the total so far to 55. Last year, there were 74 cases. There have been 244 cases since the disease was first identified here in 1989.
News of continuing difficulties with BSE comes as two new British studies are published which strengthen the evidence that a new form of human brain-wasting disease is caused by eating BSE-contaminated beef products.
Research published in Nature in March 1996 supported the assumption that a form of Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (nvCJD), which causes irreversible brain damage and eventually death in humans, arose due to exposure to BSE contaminated meat. "This new re search provides convincing evidence that the agent which causes BSE is the same as that which causes nvCJD," according to the British government advisory committee established to study possible links between the diseases.
No nvCJD cases have been confirmed here. There have been 19 detected in Britain and one in Northern Ireland. A Department of Agriculture spokesman said last night the report was being studied but he did not expect it would lead to a new crisis for the beef industry.
Nature reported a study by scientists at the Institute of Animal Health in Edinburgh. They injected laboratory mice with infectious brain samples from cows, patients with nvCJD and other CJD forms not linked to BSE.
The disease caused by BSE and nvCJD samples caused identical tissue damage in the same areas of the brain in these mice. Disease progression was different when infection was caused by other CJD forms. The second study, at the Imperial College School of Medicine, London, used a different approach which provided similar results. Blow to Irish beef trade; page 3