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What are the symptoms of Mad Cow Disease?
Home » Diseases » Mad Cow Disease » What are the symptoms of Mad Cow Disease?Humans who develop variant Credtzfeldt-Jakob disease from the food contaminated with Mad Cow develop several symptoms. vCJD is a degenerative brain disorder that is first of all incurable and second, fatal.
vCJD is not contagious; you cannot get it from your spouse or friend who has the disease. It has to be contracted through something like a medical procedure accidentally moving the infected prions into the new body, eating contaminated meat, or in another similar way.
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob is a difficult disease to diagnose since it is rare and has a long incubation period (from several months to several years). So when someone is first infected, it may take a long time for them to contract the actual disease. When vCJD begins to infect the body, it starts killing neurons in the brain and several symptoms appear, all neurological since CJD is a disease of the brain. It may begin with some insomnia, depression, changes in behavior and attitude, confusion and memory problems, sight, loss of coordination, and other subtle and "explainable" problems. Later, the infected person will develop dementia and myoclonus (jerking movements). In the most advanced stages of the vCJD, the infected person loses all mental and physical capabilities, falls into a coma, and dies. Generally, the disease takes about one year to run its full course.
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