Mad Cow Health Video

Video Transcript

JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. Justin Davis and I'd like to talk to you about mad cow disease. A mad cow disease is a little bit of a misnomer, meaning misnamed because only cows not people actually get mad cow disease which is sometimes called BSE or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. However, the reason that it's become such an important topic is that there have been cases where people had developed what we called mad cow disease, also known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, named after the person who first described from eating cows that were probably infected with BSE. What is exactly is this? Well, it is a very unusual disease that is caused by something called a prion. Prion is a small protein, it's not even alive, that gets into your central nervous system, particularly the brain and after many years can sometimes caused a problem that we called mad cow disease which is where the brain begins to start breaking down and gets these large holes in spongy appearance, eventually leading to death. This is a very unusual condition in people but not so unusual in cows. Not too long ago, there was an outbreak in the United Kingdom where several people more than what usually be diagnosed with mad cow diseases were diagnosed and it was linked back to infected beef. This has caused the world-cut wide community that consumes beef to become much stricter in monitoring where beef comes from and cows that might be infected. One theory is that cows when are fed other parts of cattle in their food are more susceptible to acquiring this BSE and this passing it on as mad cow disease to people. Symptoms? If you do get mad cow disease, what can you expect? Well unfortunately once you have it, there's really no stopping it, but the good thing is it is very unusual only about one person in a million will get this. Typically, what happens to those people who do get it is they begin having first personality changes, maybe becoming forgetful, very irritable, but this progresses and eventually leading to a complete change in their personality, finally dementia, coma, and then death. Ways to prevent it? Well, we are not exactly sure when you are going to acquire it and when you do acquire it usually takes anywhere from a few years up to maybe 10 or 20 years before symptoms show up. So, it makes a little bit more hard to prevent; however, there are some easier ways to prevent it such as not eating beef or if you're going to eat beef, then eat beef that you know where it comes from and that it has been screened properly or that it has only been fed organic or grass feed. Also certain cuts of beef that don't have any parts of the central nervous system, meaning nerves or brain matter in them or eyes, are less likely to have mad cow disease prions in them. So, your traditional plain cuts, et cetera, steaks, are more safe bets than if you are a hotdog or hamburger eater.