High vCJD rates in Scotland could be due to poor diet

摘要

The rate of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) has been found to be twice as high in Scodand and the north of England as elsewhere in Britain, leading to speculation that poorer diets in these areas may be responsible for the increased risk. Professor James Ironside, the senior pathologist at the National CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, said that the more frequent consumption of cheap meat products such as pies and burgers in the north of Britain may explain the difference. These products were more likely to contain mechanically recovered meat that had been sluiced or scraped off the bones of cattle before such material was banned for human consumption. This type of meat carried the greatest risk of infection with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).