Searching for BSE Equivalent in Humans

It’s gruesome work, but someone’s got to do it. Dr. Pierluigi Gambetti, a mild-mannered Italian neuropathologist, has what most would consider an unenviable task: examining the brains of Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease victims. With the detection of the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, so-called mad cow disease, in the United States, this job takes on more urgency for Gambetti, who directs the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University.

Gambett’s job is to determine if victims died of what is perceived to be a new variant form of the disease, new variant Cruetzfeldt-Jacob disease, which has been linked with BSE in cattle. So far, he’s studied more than 1,200 brains and identified 732 cases of CJD, but most of these are classified as the sporadic form of the disease, linked with aging.