New Form of Mad Cow Disease Is DiscoveredAP / Tuesday February 17, 1:19 PM
Italian scientists have found a second form of mad cow disease that more closely resembles the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease than the usual cow form of the illness.
The brain-wasting diseases BSE, known as mad cow disease, and human CJD are caused by different forms of mutant proteins called prions... Italian researchers reports a study of eight cows with mad cow disease found that two of them had brain damage resembling the human victims of CJD. ...the Italians named the new form with amyloid plaques BASE. ...Brown said there have also been some unpublished reports from Japan of cows with a different form of mad cow disease.