First death from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease confirmed in S. Korea

South Korea confirmed on Tuesday its first death from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a degenerative disorder caused by deformed proteins that propagate throughout the brain. The Center for Disease Control (KCDC) said that a 54-year-old woman died last November from iatrogenic CJD, which can be transmitted through contaminated organ and tissue transplantation. She is believed to have contacted the disease during a subdural graft after the removal of a brain tumor in 1987, according to the KCDC. She had been treated with a German human tissue product, Lyodura, which appears to have been contaminated. The victim started showing symptoms including paralysis in the face in 2010, the KCDC said. As iCJD has an incubation period of more than 20 years, the health authority plans to examine all neurosurgical procedures that used Lyodura in the 1980s and perform checkups on patients after receiving their approval. "We can't rule out the possibility that iCJD can occur in other patients who underwent neurosurgery using the product in the 1980s, " Park Hye-kyung, a KCDC official, said in a news briefing at the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Seoul. "So we will conduct more research, although the screening process could take a considerable time since it may be hard to secure all related medical records," said Park. The health authority will form a team of field experts to monitor further reports of iCJD prevalence in the country. About 400 cases of iCJD have been reported worldwide, of which 200 were detected after dura mater transplant operations. She also said that despite emerging concerns, there is no correlation between the latest case and variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease thought to be contracted by eating infected beef. "I want to stress that iCJD is completely different from vCJD, in terms of the way it infects humans. So, we hope people will not be misled and have unnecessary fears of mad cow disease due to the iCJD confirmed in the deceased," Park said. "In this regard, the government should strengthen the supervision of clinics, especially those of less repute," he said.