|
|
The Mad cow disease is transmitted through the contaminated feed that cows eat. The disease has a four to five year incubation period. This makes the disease very hard to track. The disease affects all age groups and is very hard to diagnose until it has nearly run its course. However, most of the cases of classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) have been diagnosed in people between the ages of 55 and 75.
There is not, as yet, a definitive medical test for diagnosing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Since the disease is rare, some physicians might not even consider it as a diagnosis, and might mistake the symptoms for other brain disorders like Alzheimer's or Huntington disease. Scientists suggest that new, sophisticated laboratory testing will in the future be able to detect the prions in an infected person's blood or tissues.
Researchers looked at the first 100 people to develop variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in the United Kingdom and found psychiatric symptoms in early stages of the disease. These included depression, withdrawal, anxiety, jumpy feelings, stress, tension and trouble sleeping. A sudden nervousness or aggression person may develop destructive behavior or actions while they are still live. Then, people have symptoms related to the nervous system, like dementia and myoclonus (rapid and brief muscle contraction or "jerk"), and rigidity of the body. Delirium or dementia develops rapidly with deterioration in all aspects of brain function and profound confusion , disorientation.
Other than that, a neurological and motor system examination shows muscle twitching, spasm and Muscle stiffness .This means that the muscles suddenly start to move sharply or on an abnormal way. There is a strong startle response. Muscle tone may be increased, or there may be weakness and muscle wasting (loss of muscle tissue). There may be abnormal reflexes or an increase in the response of normal reflexes. Examination of visual fields show areas of blindness that the person may not realize are present. There is loss of coordination related to visual-spatial perception changes and changes in the cerebellum, the area of the brain that controls coordination (cerebellar ataxia ). Therefore, there might blur vision and hallucinations.
Besides that, there are personality changes, lack of a appetite and rapid weight loss. This disease can cause you not to eat anything anymore. Other symptoms are speech impairment, Bizarre laughter resulting foaming at the mouth and poor enunciation which is hard-to-understand speech or mumbling. The symptoms for humans also include abnormal posture, which means that you may stand up or sit in an abnormal way, and not even realize it. This shown there are lack of coordination like stumbling and falling.
Within four months of the disease onset, those affected developed poor memory (memory loss) and brain abnormalitities. This can be detected by X-ray or MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). There is unsteadiness of gait that resulting eventually in the inability to stand up. The changes in gait resulting difficulty moving and walking which does not allow the people to get up and they will stay paralyzed until the day of their day. All the symptoms disorder follow until the patient goes into a coma and dies. This disease is virtually 100% fatal. Ultimately, the disease can only be confirmed by brain biopsy or by a post-mortem examination. This shows the characteristic spongiform (sponge-like) changes in the brain.
|
