NEW YORK – A 61-year-old who experienced a
severe cognitive decline before his death may have had squirrel
brains to blame.
A new report on the 2015 death in Rochester, New York, finds
that he may have suffered from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a rare
brain condition you’ve likely heard of as “mad cow disease.”
That’s what it’s called when it’s tied to consumption of
contaminated beef, but in this case, doctors suspect a different culprit.
The man was a hunter, and it was reported that he had eaten
squirrel brains, though it’s not clear whether he ate an entire brain or just
squirrel meat contaminated with brains. He was brought to the hospital after
losing touch with reality and losing the ability to walk on his own, LiveScience reports.
An MRI found that his brain scan looked similar to those seen in vCJD
sufferers.
Dr. Tara Chen, a medical resident at Rochester Regional Health,
came across the case while writing a report on suspected cases of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease at the hospital over the past five years; she
presented her findings this month.
There are three forms of CJD, and just one form (which includes
vCJD) is caused by exposure to infected brain or nervous system tissue.
Infectious proteins, called prions, fold abnormally and cause lesions in the
brain; there is no treatment or cure.
Only a few hundred cases of vCJD have ever been reported, most
of them in the UK; just four cases have ever been confirmed in the US. So far,
the hunter’s death is only considered a “probable” case of vCJD. It can only be
confirmed after death, and doctors are waiting on medical records to see if an
autopsy tested his brain tissue to confirm the diagnosis.
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