Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

From ArticleWorld

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or BSE) is also a disease known as “mad cow disease”. It is a protein-based illness that attacks the neurons of cows and sometimes humans, leading to a fatal neurodegenerative disease. It was the cause of a widespread epidemic in the U.K. beginning in approximately 1986.

Epidemic in animals

The disease of BSE is not actually an infectious disease in that it doesn’t even involve a simple microbe. Instead, a protein is transmitted from the tissues of one animal to another when the infected tissue is eaten by a healthy animal. The problem likely was caused by a single genetic mutation and spread from that one cow. The animals that were infected gradually weakened, became unable to function and died. CT scans of the brain showed large holes in brain tissue.

The disease was further spread by the widespread practice prior to the discovery of the disease of supplementing cattle feed with the meat and bone meal of other cows. Contributing to the issue was a change in European standards for sterilizing protein meal so that the infected protein survived the processing.

BSE in humans

While the epidemic of BSE in cows was being investigated, a total of over 150 humans died of the disease as well, creating isolated areas of panic. BSE had many of the characteristics of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, another encephalopathy that is not microbially-related to BSE but which has similar symptoms. This is why BSE is sometimes called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Many of the infected humans showed direct evidence of actually eating the tainted meat, although concerns about inhalation of fertilizer made from bone meal have been raised.

Controversies

Some concern has been raised over the issue of using bovine serum in vaccines for children as well as the use of bovine serum-derived insulin. Certain cosmetic treatments also were found to use bovine materials. The use of animal-derived medicines such as insulin has prompted the increase in the manufacture and use of recombinant DNA human insulin.