CHICKEN BUCKETS: 18 North Carolina patients may have been exposed to Mad Cow Disease Thru Surgery

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eighteen neurological patients in North Carolina may have been exposed to an incurable and fatal disorder similar to "mad cow" disease while undergoing surgery at the Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center because surgical instruments were insufficiently sterilized, the hospital said on Monday.

Surgeons operated on the 18 patients on January 18 using tools that had not been sufficiently sanitized after they were used on a man suspected of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the hospital in Winston-Salem said in a press statement.

"On behalf of the entire team at Novant Health, I apologize to the patients and their families for having caused this anxiety," Jeff Lindsay, president of the medical center, said at a news conference.

CJD causes failing memory, blindness, involuntary movement and coma, and kills 90 percent of patients within one year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The condition is related to mad cow disease.

The incubation period - before initial symptoms surface - can last years, the statement said. After the first sign of symptoms, most patients die within four months, it said.

The possibility of contracting the disease through surgical exposure is very remote, the hospital said.

Julie Henry, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, said the department is aware of the possible exposure of the 18 patients and is closely monitoring the situation.

Last year, health officials said at least 15 patients in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire may have been exposed to the disease in a case similarly tied to unsanitary surgical instruments.

In North Carolina, the surgical instruments were sterilized using standard hospital procedures but were not subjected to the enhanced sterilization procedures necessary on instruments used in confirmed or suspected cases of CJD, the hospital statement said.

There are no treatments for the disease, which affects about 300 Americans each year, it said.

Every year, one in a million people around the world is diagnosed with the disease, which can be contracted through organ transplants or operations, said Florence Kranitz, president of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation.

"This is not something where there is a possibility they could operate and get rid of it," Kranitz said.

"It is a 100 percent fatal brain disease robbing its victims of their humanity pretty fast," she said.

A Mayo Clinic researcher will soon fully describe a new mystery illness that was first discovered more than a year ago among slaughterhouse workers at Quality Pork Processors in Austin, Minnesota.

Approximately 18 workers in Austin have been diagnosed with a mysterious pig brain-mist disease that caused neurological concerns, like balance problems, weakness and pain.

Dr. P. James B. Dyck will present the results of research about the slaughterhouse workers' illness at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle(April 25, 2009 through May 2, 2009).

The research study Dyck will report is one of 10 chosen for public release prior to the meeting, to encourage excitement beforehand, an academy spokesman said.

The pressurized-air process used to harvest brain tissue at all three affected pork processing plants was discontinued more than a year ago. No other slaughterhouses use the process.

Slaughterhouse employees who worked in the "head room" harvesting pig-brain tissue for human consumption became ill due to aerosolized brain tissue exposure, researchers have suggested for months. The tissue was used for recipes like brains-and-gravy and eggs-and-gravy.

According to archives form the Post-Bulletin newspaper of Rochester, Minnesota, the illnesses remained undetected for many months, until Austin Medical Center interpreter Carol Hidalgo realized she had helped patients describe similar symptoms to three different health professionals, each time for a different Quality Pork Processors worker.

She contacted family physician Dr. Richard Schindler. He called Carole Bower, occupational health manager at Quality Pork Processors, who already had suspicions.

Schindler then sent a fateful e-mail inquiry to Mayo Clinic neurologists.

The Mayo neurologists soon realized there were many more than three patients with the brain-mist disease. It was soon discovered that workers who used the same technique of pressurized air to harvest brain tissue as the Austin workers were also affected at Indiana Packers Corp. in Delphi, Indiana; and the Hormel plant in Fremont, Nebraska.

"More than a year after developing a unique neurological disorder, the affected pork processing plant workers have improved, but all have some continuing symptoms and many have ongoing mild pain," a statement from the American Academy of Neurology says.

According to the academy, researchers studied 24 affected workers from the Minnesota and Indiana plants (only one worker was affected in Nebraska).

• 17 got treatment with immune therapy such as steroids

• 16 improved with treatment

• 12 showed "marked improvement"

• 2 showed "moderate improvement"

• 2 showed "mild improvement"

• 6 received no treatment, but also improved after exposure to brain mist ended

Neurologists called the new disorder a "sensory predominant polyradiculoneuropathy."

"The patients all have a unique antibody not seen before," the academy says. That antibody, researchers previously told the Post-Bulletin, was produced by the workers' bodies to fight the foreign brain matter their systems were exposed to when they breathed the aerosolized brain tissue during the harvest process.

It's unique for a formerly unknown new illness to develop, be discovered and described; a cause found and a partially effective therapy prescribed within such a short time. When Dyck presents Mayo's findings, audience members will learn that the autoimmune disease improves with treatment, and also with removal from pig brain exposure — something workers are probably already aware of.

[Dr. Dyck is dedicated to peripheral neuropathy research. Here, he displays a tie, signed by his father, also a peripheral neuropathy researcher. The image on the tie illustrates an actual peripheral neuropathy.]

Dyck is hopeful the brain-mist disease will help scientists figure out other autoimmune diseases, because this if the first one where a specific cause is known, there was a limited area affected and a limited number of potential causes and things that might confuse study results.

"There are other autoimmune disorders where the trigger is not known, so this case with a known trigger could provide us with an opportunity to understand how an antigen can trigger the body's immune system to produce disease," Dyck said in the academy's statement. The antigen is the body's response to brain tissue in the system.