I am cow,
Hear me moo,
I weigh twice as much as you
& I look good on the barbeque
Milk, cream, cheese and butter,
are all made using liquid from my udders
While i taste so so good,
whether stir-friend, boiled or stewed
I've got a disease called mad cow,
and people are starting to shun me now
BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
is the scientic name for the disease in me
The proteins in my brain are starting to go wrong,
I'll die soon, it won't be long
People who consume me will be infected,
they won't remain unaffected
In UK 170,000 people got the BSE
And in the end they all mati
While there are no cures, no treatments, no vaccines
and people now eat chicken as an alternative means,
There are a few ways to prevent this disease,
So that this epidemic can cease
Firstly, avoid products that may contain my spinal cord and tissue,
they will just increase the risk in you
Secondly, find alternative means,
such as fish, chicken, or even beans
Lastly, which i think is the best solution,
go green, the risk will be low and it will reduce pollution!
This post is about the medium in which through the Mad Cow Disease is transmitted. More to come later.
______________________________________________
Firstly,
the mad cow disease is a prion disease, a large group of related conditions affecting the nervous system, affecting both animals and humans. Examples of prion diseases include the
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and the
Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker (GSS) disease.
Prions?
One of the reasons why the mad cow disease is so dangerous is because it’s transmissible agents are not bacteria, nor viruses but are “prions”, basically
infectious proteins that are highly resistant to heat, radiation, ultraviolet light and disinfectants that normally kill bacteria and viruses. Even cooking meat containing these prions would not be able to eliminate them. Therefore it is extremely dangerous to humans, as consuming tissue containing these prions can infect them with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) or new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD), which actually the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (the scientific name, meaning sick brain) or BSE in cattle.
Prions are abnormal proteins that eat away at the brain and create tiny holes in parts of the brain, which make the brain have a sponge-like quality. These so-called spongy holes cause slow deterioration within the cattle brain, and eventually symptoms affecting the whole body, eventually causing death in the cattle.
All in all, prions are what basically cause these diseases that affect the nervous system, primarily the brain, causing characteristic sponge-like holes in the brain tissue. They are hardy, resistant to heat, radiation and disinfectants, hence not easy to destroy.
The picture below shows cross-sections of brain tissue of:
1)Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in Humans
2)Kuru Disease in Humans
3)Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Cattle
4)Scrapie in Sheep
These are all prion diseases, notice the characteristic white holes in all of the pictures. The prions cause these sponge-like holes to form in the brain tissue.
Where are Prions found?
Diseased prions are found in the brain, spinal cord, the eye (in the retina), and other tissues of the nervous system of affected animals or humans. In addition, prions can be found outside the nervous system including the bone marrow, spleen, and lymph nodes. Low levels of prions may also be found in blood.
However it is difficult to detect them through blood-testing, therefore there is the case of people who lived in the UK and in European countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia from 1980 to the present not being allowed to donate blood in the United States, under 2002 guidelines from the United States Food and Drug Administration, as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and resulting cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans have been previously diagnosed there.
This measure is to prevent the Mad Cow Disease from being transmitted through the tranfusion of blood.
_________________________________
Post #1 by SEAH QIAN YE (18)
mad cows! signed off at 10:30 PM
Infected cattle
Infected adult cattle may develop signs of the disease slowly. It may take from 2 to 8 years from the time an animal becomes infected until it first shows signs of disease. Symptoms in the animal include a change in attitude and behavior, gradual uncoordinated movements, trouble standing and walking, weight loss despite having an appetite, and decreased milk production. Eventually the animal dies. From the onset of symptoms, the animal deteriorates until it either dies or is destroyed (cattle who cannot stand are called “downers”). This disease process may take from 2 weeks to 6 months.
During the final stages, infected animals become aggressive, lack co-ordination, and are unsteady on their hooves – hence the nickname for the condition – mad cow.
Victims of the disease usually die within a year after the first symptoms appear. Veterinarians can only tell for certain if an animal died of BSE by examining its brain after death. Brains of "mad cows" are spongy, as holes have developed in the nerve cells. A deposit of fibrous protein is also apparent in the brain's tissues.
Infected Human
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is the "mad cow" disease that people contract when they are exposed to food contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
A number of subtypes of CJD exist, many with slight variations in signs and symptoms. Yet the various forms of the disease are more alike than they are different, and everyone affected by CJD must eventually contend with grave mental and physical problems.
Classic CJD and variant CJD share the characteristics listed below, but the characteristics manifest somewhat differently in each form of the disease.
Long incubation period
The incubation period is the time it takes you to become sick after you've contracted a disease. Cold symptoms usually start a day or two after you're exposed to a cold virus, for example, whereas the time frame for CJD is considerably longer.
- Classic CJD. It often takes years or even decades after infection before someone with classic CJD develops signs and symptoms of the disease.
- Variant CJD. Although it's too early to know for certain, scientists suspect that the same is true of vCJD. That's why some experts predict that an epidemic of vCJD is still to come.
Personality changes
Both classic and variant CJD begin with personality changes such as anxiety, depression, memory loss and impaired thinking. As the diseases progress, mental symptoms become more severe. Ultimately, people with both forms of CJD develop dementia — a mental disorder that robs them of the ability to speak, think, reason, remember and move. Although the symptoms of CJD sometimes resemble those of other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease, CJD usually progresses much more rapidly than do other diseases associated with dementia.
- Classic CJD. The progression from initial personality changes to complete dementia occurs very quickly, usually within a few months of the onset of symptoms.
- Variant CJD. Psychiatric symptoms are the most prominent feature early in vCJD, but dementia develops later in the course of the disease than it does in classic CJD.
Problems with balance and coordination
Both types of CJD affect balance and coordination, leading to stumbling, falls and difficulty walking, but these problems occur sooner in vCJD than they do in classic CJD.
Coma and death
Most people lapse into coma before succumbing to these invariably fatal diseases.
- Classic CJD. People with classic CJD generally live less than 12 months after signs and symptoms appear, although some people may live as long as two years. Death is usually not a result of the disease itself, but rather of complications such as heart failure, respiratory failure and pneumonia.
- Variant CJD. People with vCJD tend to live slightly longer — about 12 to 14 months after signs and symptoms appear.
Other signs and symptoms of classic CJD include:
- Blurred vision and, often, eventual blindness
- Involuntary muscle contractions (myoclonus)
- Difficulty speaking, which may lead to mumbling or speech that's hard to understand
- Difficulty swallowing
Other signs and symptoms of vCJD include:
- A sense that the skin feels sticky
- Sensations of cold or pain
- Muscle paralysis
- Tremors
By Seewei
mad cows! signed off at 6:28 PM
BSE is a relatively young disease, having made its debut about two decades ago in the Great Britain when two cases were identified in 1986. Though its origin has not been confirmed yet, research has indicated that BSE resulted from the feeding of cattle meat-and-bone meal that contained scrapie –infected sheep products. Scrapie is a prion disease of sheep.
- meat-and-bone meal
The use of meat-and-bone meal (as shown in the picture above), produced from the ground and cooked left-overs of the slaughtering process as well as from the cadavers of sick and injured animals such as cattle, sheep, or chicken, as a cheaper alternative of a protein supplement in cattle feed was widespread in Europe prior to about 1987. This was largely due to the fact that soyabeans did not grow well in the European climate; hence, meat was used as a substitute.
As shown in the graph below, the BSE epidemic in the United Kingdom peaked in January 1993 at almost 1,000 new cases per week. Through the end of 2007, more than 184,500 cases of BSE had been confirmed in the United Kingdom alone in more than 35,000 herds.
As the popular saying goes, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. BSE soon invaded the human species, through their stomachs into not their hearts but their mind. The first case of “human mad-cow disease” or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) appeared in 1996, about a decade after BSE was identified in UK.
- diagram of a human brain infected with vCJD compared to a normal brain
By 1996, several people in the UK and others who had lived there were identified with a vCJD, The cause was linked to the consumption of meat from cattle infected with mad cow disease. As of December 2003, 143 people with vCJD had been diagnosed in the UK. The table to the right summarizes reported cases of BSE and of vCJD by country. BSE is the disease in cattle, while vCJD is the disease in people.
[click on image to expand]
- reported cases of BSE and of vCJD by country (taken from wikipedia)
BY YUJIA
mad cows! signed off at 7:55 AM
What is madcow disease?
More commonly known as “mad-cow disease”, it is scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (pronounced: bo-vine spun-jih-form en-she-fah-la-puh-thee) or BSE for short.
BSE is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease in cattle, which causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord (as shown in the micrograph below).
- Micrograph of a brain infected with BSE
It affects a cow's nervous system, resulting in changes in temperament, such as nervousness or aggression, abnormal posture and difficulty in rising, decreased milk production, or loss of body weight despite continued appetite. Affected cattle eventually die or are killed. The photograph shows a cow’s inability to stand, as a result of the infection of BSE.
So basically the cow goes mad.
The disorder is rather devastating, with the incubation period stretching for 2 to 8 years, meaning that it would take that amount of time from the infection before the animal shows signs and symptoms of it. Following the onset of clinical signs, the animal's condition deteriorates until it dies. This process usually takes from 2 weeks to 6 months. Hence, a cow infected with BSE would only live up to at most to about 8 to 9 years. Poor cow.
This is not all. At present time, there is no test to detect the disease in a live animal; veterinary pathologists confirm BSE by postmortem microscopic examination of brain tissue or by the detection of the abnormal form of the prion protein, nor a cure. To put it simply, its like the aids epidemic sweeping through the cow population; and all breeds are susceptible to it.
So, as you can see or read from the above, when your darling cow goes mad, it’s really pretty sad :’(
BY YUJIA
mad cows! signed off at 6:23 AM
DEAR MISS KOH,
WE PROBABLY WON'T BE ABLE TO FINISH THIS BLOG BY 12AM, FRIDAY. SORRY!
<3 <3 <3
mad cows! signed off at 7:20 AM
For thirty years, there has been no known means of treatment. However in 2007, there was a breakthrough in this area.
BREAKTHROUGH IN SCIENCE
Scientists have found that protein blocking reverses mad-cow disease in mice. Blocking the production of certain proteins completely reverses the memory loss caused by the illness.
Howver, adapting the approach to work in humans diagnosed with the equivalent illness will take many years.
Animals and humans naturally produce “normal” prion proteins in the nervous system. However, abnormal prions that are misfolded can disrupt normal prions. This disruption causes healthy prions to misfold too, leading to mad cow disease or, in its human form, vCJD. The result is brain damage, characterised by a lack of coordination, dementia, and ultimately death.
Mice that were genetically engineered and to stop producing normal prion proteins at around 10 weeks of age – the equivalent of about age 25 in humans. They also used a control group of normal mice.
At one-week-old, both groups were infected with misfolded prions, and all began showing the typical signs of prion illness, including mental decline, and tests revealed the mice all had impaired memory.
The control mice continued to show a consistent decline in memory. However, starting at nine weeks of age, the genetically engineered mice began showing memory improvements in the tests. In fact, they regained a normal capacity to recall objects.
It is the first study to demonstrate that the mental impairments – including memory loss – caused by prion disease may be reversed.
Scientists believe that the genetically engineered mice recovered from the illness because they stopped producing prion proteins. As a result, there were fewer normal prions for the misfolded prions to disrupt.
BY KENI
mad cows! signed off at 7:17 AM
Although there are no cures for this disease, the very least we can do is try our best to prevent it from happening.
PREVENTION OF DISEASE IN HUMANS
Avoid ground beef, sausage and hot dogs. These products are more likely to have contaminated nervous tissue ground inside.
Choose solid muscle cuts of meat rather than bone-in cuts. This will reduce your chance of contact with nervous tissue.
Don't eat beef in countries where outbreaks have occurred in the past, such as the United Kingdom. It can take two to eight years for symptoms to develop, making it difficult to determine if the disease has been completely wiped out.
Avoid beef altogether. If you are still not comfortable with the risk of contracting vCJD, stick to a diet of chicken and fish instead of beef. You could also opt for a vegetarian diet.
PREVENTION OF DISEASE IN CATTLE
Avoid feed with mammalian protein. This is identified as the primary way mad cow disease is spread.
Test cattle regularly for early detection. Unfortunately, there is no live animal test at this time, but testing a herd can prevent an outbreak.
BY KENI
mad cows! signed off at 7:09 AM
These are all prion diseases, notice the characteristic white holes in all of the pictures. The prions cause these sponge-like holes to form in the brain tissue. 
Avoid ground beef, sausage and hot dogs. These products are more likely to have contaminated nervous tissue ground inside.
Don't eat beef in countries where outbreaks have occurred in the past, such as the United Kingdom. It can take two to eight years for symptoms to develop, making it difficult to determine if the disease has been completely wiped out. 
