Saudi Man first to suffer Mad cow disease in Kingdom

Doctors in Saudi Arabia have diagnosed the kingdom’s first case of the human form of mad cow disease and medical sources suggested the victim contracted the disease in Britain.Okaz newspaper reports preliminary tests indicate the unnamed man is suffering from the disease, known as variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD).

Doctors in Saudi Arabia have diagnosed the kingdom’s first case of the human form of mad cow disease and medical sources suggested the victim contracted the disease in Britain.Okaz newspaper reports preliminary tests indicate the unnamed man is suffering from the disease, known as variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD). But they suggest he is most likely to have contracted it on a visit to Britain.The paper quotes an agriculture ministry official saying Saudi cattle are subject to specialist testing and no illness has been registered among herds in the kingdom. The man is believed to have visited Britain, where mad cow disease devastated the beef industry and dozens of people have died from vCJD. Although he avoided eating beef, he may have been “the victim of trickery over the types of meat sold in markets”, mistakenly buying minced beef instead of mutton, the paper reports.The man first complained he felt weak about three months ago and then began to lose his memory and found trouble talking.Formally named bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow disease can be spread through the consumption of contaminated meat. About 140 people, most of them in Britain, have died of the human form of the disease. (Source: Reuters Health, ABC Health News Online, Feb 2004)