February 4, 2005

Japan confirms first case of human mad cow disease

Japan confirmed its first case of the human variant of mad cow disease, health minitry officials said.

Suspicions that a Japanese man, who had recently travelled to Britain, might be the first in the country to contract the disease were confirmed on Friday. Jiji Press said the person had already died.

The victim had showed symptoms of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a condition in which a patient loses bodily functions and the brain wastes away, reports said.

Kyodo News said the man travelled for several months in Britain around 1990, when mad cow disease was rampant.

More than 140 people -- mostly in Britain -- have died world wide from definitive or probable variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a fatal brain disease, after eating meat contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

In 2001, Japanese authorities suspected that a girl had become the country's first case of the variant disease, but tests proved the report false.

Non-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be contracted by other means and Japan has seen 1,029 people diagnosed with it, mostly through medical operations in which they received a dura mater, a fibrous membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

Japan is the only Asian country to have confirmed mad cow disease in its own herd and has screened every cow slaughtered for consumption since September 2001.

Japan, once the biggest importer of US beef, stopped buying after a mad cow case was discovered in the United States in December 2003. The two countries have agreed in principle to resume the beef trade but are still working out technicalities on testing.