Woman's Illness May Be Mad Cow-Like
By Associated Press

April 18, 2002, 7:22 PM EDT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A 22-year-old British woman living in Florida is
believed to have a brain illness linked to mad cow disease, the first known
case in the United States, health officials said Thursday.

The woman is believed to have caught the fatal disease by eating beef in
Britain at the height of that country's cattle epidemic, said Dr. Steve
Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There's every reason to suspect that she acquired her illness there," he
said.

Officials with the Florida Department of Health emphasized that there is no
reason to suspect cattle in the United States have the cow version, known as
bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

"All evidence indicates her illness poses no threat to anyone else or the
agriculture industry," said state Health Department spokesman Bill Parizek.

Ostroff agreed there was no risk to Americans from the case of "new variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" announced Thursday.

Mad cow disease is a brain-destroying illness that first surfaced in British
cattle but now has spread to cattle in much of Europe. A human form,
referred to as vCJD, apparently spread by eating infected beef, has claimed
more than 90 lives in Britain and parts of Europe.

Mad cow disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows, has
never been found in U.S. cattle. Nor had the new vCJD ever been diagnosed in
anyone living here -- although Americans can get a similar disease, regular
CJD.

The woman was born and raised in Britain and lived there at the height of
that country's BSE epidemic. She was diagnosed in Britain recently, but is
living in Florida with her family now, the CDC said.

British health officials informed their U.S. counterparts of her illness
Thursday.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

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