La plus jeune des cas de vMCJ ?

from :logo electronic telepraph 9/03/2000

A 15-YEAR-OLD girl who has died after a long illness is believed to be the youngest victim of the human form of mad cow disease.

Claire McVey died in January from suspected variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, which is linked to consumption of BSE-infected beef. If vCJD is confirmed as the cause of her death, she may have contracted it in infancy. Since vCJD was identified in 1992 there have been 52 deaths from the disease in Britain. The average age of those who have died is 29.

Claire was a pupil at Ilfracombe Community College in Devon. An inquest into her death has been opened and adjourned pending scientific investigation of tissue samples. But the CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh has been notified of her death and she has been included in the latest statistics recording deaths from the illness.

She died at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, where a post mortem examination was carried out. A spokesman said: "We can confirm that we conducted an autopsy on a teenager which confirmed a diagnosis of variant CJD."

Dr Mark Kealy, consultant in communicable diseases at North Devon health authority, said there was no danger of the disease having spread to her family or classmates. He said: "One assumes that she must have had links with bovine offal and consumed it in the past before the controls were put in place and properly enforced.

"What we are seeing at present are people who were presumably infected in the mid to late Eighties. It is possible this girl may have contracted the illness when she was a toddler."

 

Une jeune fille de 15 ans, du nord du Devon est suspectée être la victime la plus jeune de la vMCJ.

Elle serait morte au mois de Janvier de nouvelle variante CJD, six mois après être tombée malade.

Les experts de santé disaient hier qu'elle pourrait avoir contracté la maladie en mangeant un beefburger contaminé avec la viande infectée plus que dix années auparavant.

L'adolescente est la 52 ème victime de la maladie reliée à la BSE, selon le Dr J.Ironside, de l'unité de surveillance CJD d'Édimbourg. Bien que certains du diagnostic, la cause de la mort ne sera officiellement confirmée qu'après des examens et des essais sur les tissus du cerveau de la jeune fille.

Le Dr Ironside a déclaré : " Depuis le premier groupe de dix patients rapporté dans 1996, il y a eu 52 patients qui sont morts de nouvelle variante CJD. Il y a un petit nombre de patients encore vivants qui sont soupçonnés d'être atteint de vMCJ. La fille est un des cas les plus jeunes.

L'âge moyen de gens qui meurent de variante CJD est de 29 ans. "

En septembre 1999, une jeune fille de 17 ans, morte en Écosse, était la plus jeune victime connue de la maladie.

Retour vMCJ