Bovine Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?

BMJ 1996;312:791-793 (30 March)

Editorials

Bovine Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?

Failures of epidemiology must be remedied

Britain's Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit was setup in 1990 to alert the Department of Health and the government'sSpongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) to any changesthat might suggest that humans were affected by exposure tothe agent responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).These would include changes in age specific incidence, occupationaldistribution, or dietary correlates of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakobdisease. Presentation, if it happened at all, was consideredmore likely to be atypical, but this could not be describedin advance. The surveillance unit has fulfilled its remit spectacularlyand speedily: a previously unrecognised and consistent diseasepattern in young adults has been found, the most likely explanationfor which is exposure to the bovine spongiform encephalopathyagent, most probably (but not necessarily) before specifiedbovine offals were banned in 1989.