Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Kills Kansas Man
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease has taken the life of a 53-year old Colby, Kansas man. He died Friday, Jan. 11, 2008 at the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita where he where he had been a patient since December. .
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a rare disease that affects the central nervous system and turns brain tissue spongy.
Karen Shideler reported on the death today in the Wichita Eagle. She says:
One variation of the disease is the so-called mad cow disease but the human form of that has never been seen in the United States in someone who hadn't had exposure elsewhere.
Because the incubation period for the disease is years or even decades, health officials don't know how or when the Kansas man got the disease, nor what its source may have been.
They won't know for several weeks, until testing is complete, which form of the disease he had.
The diagnosis at this time is Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD, said Wesley spokesman Paul Petitte. The only way to confirm CJD is through testing of brain tissue, which will be done through the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center.
Kansas has an average of three CJD cases a year, according to Joe Blubaugh, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one to two people per million have a spontaneous case of CJD each year. On average, 250 to 300 cases of CJD are reported annually.
In addition to the spontaneous cases, a certain form of CJD can come from consumption of beef that has been infected with mad cow disease, as happened in Great Britain in the mid-1990s. The United States and other countries implemented various measures in response, to prevent the disease and better track infected cattle.
CJD can also come from blood transfusions, and it can be hereditary in very rare cases.
Richard Liepins, who was the attending physician in the local case, said, "We have no idea of how he possibly contracted this."
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