There is only one sure way to know if a person suffers from a fatal neurodegenerative disease that was linked to last fall "mad cow". Wait until the person dies, and look brand signs of the disease in a slice of brain tissue Now, however, researchers hope to develop a test for the disease before it kills. a team of scientists reports in January 11 issue of the Lancet they found a wandering protein, considered responsible for the disease in the tonsils of the victim.
the discovery comes from the same team last October announced the proof (see science NOW, October 23, 1996) connecting a new variant of the disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) - which killed 14 people in Britain and one in France since 1994 --with BSE, "mad cow" is formally known.
In his latest work, the group, led by John Collinge of Imperial College School of Medicine at St. Mary's Hospital, London, isolated resistant prion protein to protease, which has been linked to vCJD , tonsils of a 35 year old woman who died after an illness of 14 months, with the characteristic symptoms of the disease: loss of muscle coordination, memory loss, and dementia. Because doctors can easily scrape the tonsil tissues of adults who still have theirs, such a test, the authors conclude that "may allow early clinical or possibly preclinical diagnosis of CJD."
" it is a very interesting job, "said Clarence Gibbs, a researcher of CJD at the National Institute of neurological disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. But it's hard to say how useful such a test might be, he adds . for one thing, Gibbs points out, "there is no cure for CJD," so a diagnosis is currently little to help victims of the disease. However, a test could help identify people who might be enrolled in drug trials and could move the focus of concern among people with symptoms including negative test.
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