A 61-year-old man died after ingesting squirrel brains. Doctors suspect contamination linked to a variant of Creutz-feldt-Jakob disease.
Ingest squirrel brains? Very little for you! If this culinary practice may surprise, it is however a common tradition in some countries, such as in the state of Kentucky, in the United States. But it would not be risk, alert American researchers of the Rochester Regional Health (New York) who presented their work during theID Week 2018, in San Francisco in early October.
Scientists have cited the case of a 61-year-old hunter who, in 2015, consumed squirrel brains. Some time later, the man developed psychiatric disorders with symptoms of psychosis, schizophrenia and cognitive decline.
Five months later, the man died of what doctors detected as Creutz-feldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a distinct variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), better known by the nickname ” mad cow disease”. This very rare condition forms prions, abnormal protein fragments that infiltrate the brain and destroy the nervous system.
3 cases of CJD since 2013 in the United States
According to the researchers, three out of five cases of CJD have been entered into the Rochester Hospital registry since 2013. Scientists speculate that another CJD patient was infected through a blood sample taken in during gynecological surgery.
For twenty years, science has confirmed the danger for the human brain of consuming squirrel brains. In the case of the hunter, the certainty of a correlation between the ingestion of squirrel brains and contraction of CJD could not be established 100% by the doctors.
The patient’s family members, however, confirmed that he had indeed consumed squirrel brains. Doctors at Rochester Regional Health are currently trying to get permission to examine the hunter’s brain tissue to accurately determine if a case of CJD, and thus prion formation, was the cause of his destruction.
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