Bovine spongiform encephalopathy and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: A risk analysis

Abstract

There is doubt that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) resulted from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) transmission from cattle to human. What is uncertain is the total number of vCJD cases (currently about 80). In this review I covered recent data on the vCJD and BSE epidemic, the mode of BSE spreading to humans and, finally, the data on the PRNP analogue - the doppel gene (PRND).