Woman with human form of mad cow disease dies in US

	Tweet

A Florida woman suffering from the only known case in the United States of the human form of mad cow disease has died, her family said on Monday.

Charlene Singh died on Sunday at her home in Fort Lauderdale after being ill for several years with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is fatal and incurable. Her family believes she contracted it by eating contaminated meat in Britain more than a decade ago.

"I miss her smile, I miss her voice,” Singh’s mother, Alison Singh, told local media. “It’s like a nightmare.”

The brain-wasting illness is thought to be caused by eating processed food made from cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

Singh, 25, was born and raised in Britain, where an outbreak of the disease hit tens of thousands of cattle in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the more than 150 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob worldwide have been reported in Britain.

Singh moved to Florida with her family in 1992 and became ill in late 2001.

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Christine Pearson, said after Singh’s death that the department would send a team of experts to Florida for meetings with local health officials.

The CDC has monitored Singh’s case since it was confirmed in 2002.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle. Up to November 2003, more than 183,000 cases of the disease were confirmed in Britain in more than 35,000 herds, according to CDC figures.

Singh’s case was the only reported case of the illness reported to the CDC in the United States. Last December, BSE was diagnosed in an adult Holstein cow from Washington State that had probably been imported from Canada two years earlier. 

RELATED STORIES:
How meningitis bacteria attack the brain   Teens, parents alerted to possibility of pertussis   Nine die in Alabama during bacteria outbreak   Newborns with low vitamin D levels at increased risk for respiratory infections   Blood transfusions associated with infection   Angola says at least 77 die in acute fever outbreak   New mosquito type seen making malaria fight harder   Nigeria cholera death toll rises above 1,500: UN   US hepatitis outbreaks tied to use of test devices   Fake drugs threaten gains made in war on malaria   Tiny fungi may have sex while infecting humans   New nasal vaccines may be given together

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]