18 people reportedly exposed to incurable disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) in N.C.

[n2doc]

JAMAL ANDRESS

Eighteen people possibly exposed to a rare brain disease considered incurable and fatal — and it happened while they were being treated at a North Carolina hospital.

"Their surgeries were performed with instruments that were not properly sterilized, exposing them to a degenerative neurological disorder referred to as CJD." (Via KMBC)

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD affects only one in every 1 million people worldwide and is fatal 100 percent of the time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The surgeries took place at Novnt Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. (Via Center for Disease Control)

more
http://www.ajc.com/news/lifestyles/health/18-people-reportedly-exposed-incurable-disease-nc/ndKrc/

[Gothmog]

1. One of my aunts just pass away due to CJD

We have not figured out how she contracted CJD

[Jenoch]

4. Did she eat any wild game?

There are some states with deer and/or elk populations with Chronic Wasting Disease which is similar to CJD.

[Arugula Latte]

6. I've read that it can lie dormant in brains for decades.

It could, for example, stem from some meat she ate years ago. Who knows, though.

[Gothmog]

9. She lived in Turkey for a while

CJD can be dormant for 50 or so years and when my aunt was young she spent two years in Turkey. Right now, that is th best guess by my cousins

[City Lights]

7. Very sad. I'm sorry for your loss.

[Warpy]

29. Nobody knows how most instances happened.

Here in the west, people who eat elk are taking a chance because wasting disease due to spongiform encephalopathy (a variant CJD) is becoming more common.

Some cases have been traced to surgical equipment and some have been traced to things like corneal transplants from people who died of the disease.

Most neurologists go through their working lives without seeing a single case. I've seen three over the years. It's horrific to watch.

However, exposed doesn't always mean infected.

If any of these patients starts to exhibit a change in personality or behavior, it's the earliest sign of the disease. In all three cases I've seen, the person has spent six months to a year misdiagnosed with various psychiatric disorders and placed on medication that didn't work beyond sedating them a bit.

[cthulu2016]

2. CJD is a prion disease, like mad cow

[Whisp]

16. yes, extremely scarey stuff.

I was reading a bit about it when Britain had that horrible mad cow outbreak (was it in the 80s?) and I was horrified.

[Siwsan]

33. I spent a lot of time in Britain, during the 80's, and I still worry about if I was exposed

I know the odds are very, very, very small but it has always been in the back of my mind - especially at times when I seem to be overly clumsy.

I was told I should probably not donate blood.

[hatrack]

3. "Exposed" - love that weasel word. Just say it - "infected".

Infected.

[jeff47]

10. Well, infected means something else.

They don't know if these people were actually infected.

The tools were sterilized, but not well enough to be absolutely sure no prions survived. Sterilization is a multi-step process, and they didn't do all the steps properly. But each properly-done step could have killed the prions on the tools.

So they may or may not have been infected.

[LisaL]

39. From what other articles say, the tools were sterilized properly for the regular procedure.

But those proper techniques are not enough for "mad cow" disease. The hospital didn't do the extra steps needed for tools exposed to mad cow disease.

[yawnmaster]

13. exposed and infected do have different meanings...

a patient exposed to something is not necessarily infected.
In this case, infection is 100% fatal, eventually.
If you tell a patient that they have been infected with this, it means that it prion has definitely entered their body in a harmful manner.
Exposed means there is a chance of non-infection.

That said...they headline reads "may"
One could put may have been infected or may have been exposed.
At this time they think the likelihood of actual infection is low, so exposed is probably the correct term to use, unless you want to raise panic or create a bit of hyperbole.

[wildbilln864]

49. get a dictionary! n/t

[Arugula Latte]

5. Horrific!

Gawd, those poor people. How the f@#$ does a hospital not sterilize instruments properly?!

[Sweet Freedom]

17. They did sterilize them

But the CDC recommends destroying them. (Which sounds like good advice to me! ) The article doesn't say why they didn't discard the instruments.

[csziggy]

19. A lot of people don't even wash their hands effectively, even in hospital

Even many medical professionals don't wash effectively. Apparently, the word has not gotten to many of them that antibiotics are not as all powerful as they were once thought to be and people are lazy about the most basic way to avoid spreading disease.

When I was in hospital for knee replacements, I was thought to be a MERSA carrier. Even then, even with the warnings on the door, many of the medical staff did not follow the procedures. If I really had been a MERSA carrier, those staff members could have spread MERSA across the ward. Fortunately, the original test was a false positive but it was interesting to see how lax the staff was.

My mother was a RN trained before antibiotics were available. She was in charge of the infectious disease ward at Camp Pendleton when the Naval Hospital was being set up there. She knew the procedures to use to protect against the spread of diseases for which there were no treatments at the time.

We were taught as children to wash thoroughly and I have never lost that habit. I wash more thoroughly than most of the medical professionals I saw at the hospital and I wash my hands often.

I'm not surprised to hear that hospitals are overly casual about sterilization. They need to go back to pre-World War II protocols.

[arthritisR_US]

8. I've never heard of this disease and the odds are 1 in a million and here they have

18 in one locale, that's some scary!

[jeff47]

11. 18 people were operated on after the tools were not properly sterilized.

There was 1 case, not 18. 18 were exposed after the 1 case was treated. Whether or not they were actually infected is unknown.

[arthritisR_US]

12. Ah, got it thanks :) nt

[yawnmaster]

14. Exactly...people should know that there is a difference between "exposed" and "infected". eom

[Gravitycollapse]

23. Direct brain exposure to prions is EXTREMELY dangerous. Once one settles in, you're doomed.

I am not usually terrified by most illnesses. Prion diseases are the exception.

If you are infected with prions, you will die. And it will be a really miserable death.

[pipi_k]

18. Actually...

What makes CJD so horrifying is that there really IS no "proper" (i.e. effective) way to sterilize the tools.

The prions involved in CJD can't be killed by sterilization. Or antibacterials. Or bleach.

They can be deactivated, but they cannot be destroyed.

[yawnmaster]

32. They can absolutely be destroyed. They are a protein and as such are susceptible to denaturization

by various means. They are a hardy protein so more drastic measures are needed than other proteins, but bleach and heat will completely destroy the molecule, if the bleach is strong enough and the heat is high enough.

Being a protein they are not alive so really aren't "killable", but they can be denatured and made inactive or actually destroyed.

[LisaL]

38. But regular sterilization methods don't kill them.

Which is why they need to be either discarded, or sterlized by some super methods that are not done regularly.

[yawnmaster]

41. That is absolutely true!

The post I responded to made it seem like this was an indestructible substance, and that not even bleach could "kill" it.

[LisaL]

37. From reading other articles on this subject, the tools were sterilized by regular methods.

It's not good enough for "mad cow" disease.
The tools either need to be discarded, or extra sterilized.

[Octafish]

15. Heartbreaking...Completely heartbreaking.

Most reprehensible. Any medical institution that allows that to happen needs top to bottom review.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. Kind of off topic, but prions are chemicals - proteins - which sit right on the boundary between

what we consider "alive" and not alive, even more so than viruses.

How do the Creationists explain that?

[msanthrope]

21. God was interrupted while making them? They were supposed to be unicorns, but

God got distracted, and never finished?

[Warren DeMontague]

26. It certainly couldn't be that God doesn't want people to eat factory farmed meat

Naaaaah.

[yawnmaster]

36. viruses are about on the boundary as one can get. I wouldn't even consider a protein to be near...

alive. Perhaps I'm not understanding what you mean that proteins are closer to alive that viruses.

[OnyxCollie]

40. Prion, not protein.

[yawnmaster]

42. A prion IS a protein!!

That is current scientific belief.
And in any case why would a prion (a protein) be any closer to life than a virus, which often contains proteins!

[Warren DeMontague]

43. You're interpreting what i said backwards. Maybe I wasn't clear.

Prions are, imho, even less "alive" than viruses. By "even more so" I meant that they are closer than viruses to that line between alive and not alive. And yet they display some life-esque characteristics, like the ability to replicate under certain conditions.

[yawnmaster]

46. yep...I did interpret it backwards. they are very interesting molecules...

and I am very sure there is so much more.

[Warren DeMontague]

48. Totally.

Interesting, indeed- but I don't think I'd want to get anywhere near em without a biohazard suit!

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/a/aa122703a.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Sterilization

[Enthusiast]

45. Excellent point.

When I first read this about a decade ago I was shocked to learn that prions weren't really alive as such. I was concerned because we ate primarily venison (and continue to do so).

[uppityperson]

24. Just eat kale!

[greatauntoftriplets]

27. Now I want some bacon!

[uppityperson]

30. maybe I'll make orange grouse for supper

[greatauntoftriplets]

31. You could wash it down with one of these!

[Gravitycollapse]

25. Actually, prion diseases are often inherited. It remains latent for decades.

All it takes is one malformed protein to kick start the degenerative process.

The person who was originally operated on might have inherited it.

[livetohike]

35. My husband's maternal Aunt passed away from CJD in 1994 and he is no longer permitted to donate

blood. Every one of the sisters (5 of them) has/had Alzheimer's.

[Vashta Nerada]

28. I posted about this yesterday.

The Mayo Clinic says one could get it by exposure to beef with mad cow disease:

Variant CJD is linked primarily to eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the medical term for mad cow disease.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease/basics/causes/con-20028005

[Kali]

44. vCJD is not the same as CJD

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/vcjd/factsheet_nvcjd.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/cjd/index.htm

About CJD

Important Note: Classic CJD is not related to "mad cow" disease. Classic CJD also is distinct from "variant CJD", another prion disease that is related to BSE.

[Iliyah]

34. Oh shit

WTF, really.

[JNelson6563]

47. Wow. Just horrible.

Can you imagine being one of those unfortunate souls? One of the biggest fuck ups I've heard of in a very long time. Just wow.

Julie