Hospital tests two for brain disease

Wellington Hospital has tested two patients for the fatal brain condition Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Test results from one of the patients are negative and results for the other are pending.

The hospital's infectious diseases specialist, Tim Blackmore, said the tests were a precaution to rule out the remote possibility of the disease. The second set was unlikely to be positive, he said. "We're just going through the system. It's part of business as usual."

Brain biopsies to test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are carried out several times a year in patients with unexplained neurological conditions.

Until the disease is excluded and another diagnosis is made, surgical instruments used on the patients are kept in quarantine to prevent possible contamination.

"It's important to not have the instruments go into somebody else," Dr Blackmore said.

All equipment is incinerated if the disease is found.

There are three forms of the neurodegenerative disease that kills sufferers within a year.

Variant CJD is linked to the human form of mad cow disease caused by eating infected meat products. There have been no cases in New Zealand to date. The sporadic and hereditary forms are not related to mad cow disease and occur three or four times a year in New Zealand.

- NZPA