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U.S. researchers reported that mad cow disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is identical to human disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). This new report may shed some light on the origin of the disease–supporting the idea that BSE originated from a previously undetected strain from contaminated cattle feed in the UK.

“The study [supports] the hypothesis that all three forms of TSEs in humans are also found in cattle: infectious, sporadic, and genetic. It provides additional support that the BSE epidemic may have originated from a genetic case of BSE in an individual cow. Of course, similar mutations can pop up in cattle herds throughout the world and might provide the raw genetic material for new epidemics to develop in the future, especially in countries where it is a common practice to feed slaughterhouse scraps to healthy animals that will enter the human food chain in the future.”
- GrrlScientist, ScienceBlogs.com

Source: ScienceBlogs.com