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Spokane.net »
Sudoku
 | Monday, January 19, 2004 |
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Spokane Wasting disease is rare in region Carla K. Johnson There have been no increases in the numbers of deaths and no geographic clusters of deaths from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease during the last seven years in Washington or Idaho. That should be reassuring to people confused about the several types of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and to people who have heard rumors of area residents dying from the type of CJD related to eating infected beef. State health officials say no one has died of the human version of mad co National health officials say the only case of mad cow-related CJD in the United States was in a Florida woman who had grown up in the United Kingdom, where mad cow was a widespread problem in herds during the 1980s. CJD is a brain-wasting disease that is always fatal. Like mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, the disease is thought to be caused by abnormal prion proteins. It can arise naturally in older people. Though rare, doctors have known about it for years. In the last seven years, 14 Washington residents died of CJD that health officials say is unrelated to mad cow disease, and had autopsies. None of those people was younger than 42 years old. In Idaho, there were three CJD deaths where there were autopsies and another four with no autopsies during the same seven years (1997-2003). Death certificate statistics gathered by The Spokesman-Review show that both Washington and Idaho have slightly lower incidences of CJD than the national rate of one new case per year per 1 million population. Here are more facts about CJD in the two states during the past seven years: •In Washington, the age range of people who died of CJD was 42 to 78. •In Idaho, the age range was 35 to 82. Leaving out the one case where the victim was 35, the age range was 52 to 82. (The Spokesman-Review previously reported on the CJD death last year of Peter Putnam, an Idaho resident who was 35.) •The deaths in both states were evenly distributed over the years and throughout the counties of the states. •In Washington, there were CJD deaths in these counties: Benton, Clark, Island, King, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Thurston and Whatcom. Most of those counties had just one CJD death each during the seven years. •In Idaho, there were CJD deaths in these counties: Ada, Canyon, Elmore, Idaho, Kootenai, Payette, and Owyhee. Each of those counties had one CJD death each during the seven years.
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