Posted on 01/30/2009 6:48:32 PM PST by nickcarraway
A simple, inexpensive DNA blood test may be able to detect "mad cow" disease in live cattle months before they show any clinical signs of the disease, according to a Canadian-led team of researchers.
Currently, BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) can only be diagnosed by testing brain samples from dead animals. The ability to test live animals could have a huge impact on beef inspection worldwide. This test may also be able to detect Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in elk.
University of Calgary scientists and colleagues in Germany analyzed 16 BSE-infected and non-infected cattle and 19 CWD-infected and non-infected elk, and identified specific DNA sequences in the infected animals.
"The next steps are to analyze a time course series for BSE-infected cattle, to screen different cattle breeds for variances in the sequence patterns and also to look at cattle with brain tumors, brain trauma and other brain infections to make sure we are really picking up BSE," principal investigator Christoph Sensen said in a University of Calgary news release.
"Once that is done, our team sees the possibility for the production of a low-cost, high-output standard test kit for industry use in the next few years," Sensen said.
The research was published in the January issue of the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
Last September, Canadian and German researchers reported that cattle with mad cow disease have elevated protein levels in their urine, a finding that could lead to the development of a urine screening test for live animals.
The scientists also said it may be possible to develop a urine test to diagnose the fatal human brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is thought to be linked to BSE.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The government doesn’t let meat producers test cattle now, I’m not sure a new test will make a difference.
Is that the disease that makes you look like Helen Thomas in the late stages?
Is that the disease that makes you look like Helen Thomas in the late stages?
LOL That is a more dreaded symptom than loosing your mind.
Is this MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s disease? That is to say, Rachel MadCow?
If you’re raising cows and mad cow disease is traced to your herd, you could be forced to kill them all, so wouldn’t it be in a producer’s interest to run a test himself?
that's because they don't want the public to know just how many cases there really are. BSE occurs naturally in about one in every 100,000, or million cows I can't remember which. so we should be finding about 1000 cows a year. This number shoots up drastically if cows are fed rendering plant feed containing beef, and that beef happens to be infected, which is why they banned feeding that kind of feed years back when we had that BSE scare. They government also knows that the disease is progressive, starting in the brain and working it's way outward into the nerve ganglea as the cow ages. That's why it shows up in old dairy cows, and old breeding bulls triggering these BSE scares when they drop dead in the field. But if they slaughter beef cows for human consumption at around 24-28 months, even if the cow has BSE, the misfolded proteins haven't spread into the ganglia yet. Even so, machine deboning and ripping of the ganglia out when butchering is banned as well, to reduce the chances of nerve ganglia being left in the meet, especially since it runs through the best cuts of beef, the tenderloins. The government does it's testing on one every thousand cows, so they say, and they catch a few just to make the consumer feel they are being protected. People who eat cow brains and tongue, anything from the head are taking a bigger risk of eating BSE tainted meat. and developing CJV, especially rapid onset CJV. Also, the government does not require states to keep records on humans who get rapid onset CJV, or CJV, which is most often not even diagnosed, It's mistaken for Alzheimer's disease and the brain is never tested after the person dies. The thing about CJV however, is transferable from human to human. CJV takes about 40 years before your brain becomes swiss cheese like BSE brains in cattle when it's in an advanced stage.
Rapid onset CJV is caused by eating BSE tainted beef and can kill you when your relatively young, within 15 years of eating tainted beef. You suddenly go crazy and die within a few months.
No wonder they don't keep records. convenient huh?
Because it can be spread from human to human as well, we could get a outbreak like the UK did in the 80's.
They've also discovered lately that 50% of the population may be immune, so if a human type of BSE ever got badly out of control only half of us would die.
There's also a possibility of other types of BSE, or BSE mutating and crossing into other species, and crossing into the species barrier to humans.
They should. It only adds about 5 cents to the cost of beef, certainly worth the protection.
But the Cattlemans lobby is a powerful force, they don’t want the real facts exposed, which is stupid if you ask me. Japan demands testing on every cow, or else they will not accept any beef from north America.
“Is this MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s disease? That is to say, Rachel MadCow?”
<<<This thread is going to have to be keyworded for humor if I laugh any harder. I nearly spilled my glass of merlot ;)
How about a simple, inexpensive DNA blood test for those of us who can't donate blood because we ate Burger King in Europe in the '80's...
Hows your memory lately? Do you find yourself wandering around somewhere but forget how you got there, or what you went there for in the first place? Missplace stuff like keys, tools etc?
That would be nice. I thought the blood donation ban was for people who lived in England longer than 6 months. (which I did)
Lately, my head does turn when someone says, "moo". (Maybe too much Burger King - eh?)
I've been turned down for years now. I don't even get past filling out the form. Just ask, up front, if they take blood from someone who lived in Europe in the '80's.
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