mad cow disease

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: mad cow disease

Fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include behavioral changes (e.g., agitation), gradual loss of coordination and locomotive function, and, in advanced stages, weight loss, fine muscular contractions, and abnormal gait. Brain tissue becomes pitted with holes and spongy. Death usually follows within a year. The disease is similar to the neurodegenerative disease of sheep called scrapie. No treatment is known. A BSE epidemic in Britain that began in the mid-1980s is believed to have been caused by the use of cattle feed containing supplements made from ruminant carcasses and trimmings. Hundreds of thousands of infected cattle were slaughtered and the use of animal-derived protein supplements ended. The cause of both BSE and scrapie is attributed to an infectious aberrant protein called a prion. The unusual occurrence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, another prion-related illness, in young people beginning in the mid-1990s may be linked to eating meat from cattle with BSE.

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Food and Nutrition: mad cow disease

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Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, see BSE.

Health Dictionary: mad cow disease

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A lethal disease that originates in cows and can spread to humans through consumption of affected neural tissue. It is called Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease in humans. It causes the brain to deteriorate through the instrument of an infectious protein called a prion.

WordNet: mad cow disease

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a fatal disease of cattle that affects the central nervous system; causes staggering and agitation
Synonyms: bovine spongiform encephalitis, BSE

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	Jakob-Creutzfeldt syndrome (Health)
	bovine spongiform encephalopathy
	BSE

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		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Food and Nutrition. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2005 by A. E. Bender and D. A. Bender. All rights reserved. Read more
		Health Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more
		WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more