What is variant CJD?
Known colloquially as the human form of BSE, it was first named as a disease by scientists in 1996, who believed the emergence of a new neurological condition in relatively young people, including teenagers, was linked to the cattle epidemic. This had made its first appearance a decade earlier and had probably been slumbering in herds for years before that. The assumption has been that most humans caught the long-incubating disease by eating infected parts of the animal. It is called ‘variant’ (at first ‘new variant’) because it is relatively similar to a disease called sporadic CJD, the causes of which are still uncertain. Sporadic CJD was first described in 1920 and usually occurs in around one in a million people. Decline from the onset of symptoms to death is usually far faster than in vCJD. What are the symptoms of vCJD? Anxiety and depression are often the first symptoms. There may also be pain and strange sensations in the face and limbs. These may be followed months later by je
