The public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre reported to the Health Bureau (SSM) yesterday another probable sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) case, following the one discovered late last month, according to an SSM statement.
According to yesterday’s SSM statement, the patient is a 51-year-old local female resident, who had come down with symptoms of dizziness and blurred vision since December last year. She then sought treatment at a local medical institution in January this year, where she was initially diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Associated with the worsening of her symptoms and inability to walk and talk this month, she was admitted to the public hospital’s emergency department. The patient’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples tested positive for prion proteins, diagnosed with probable sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
The patient’s family members have not shown similar symptoms, the statement said, adding there was no record that the patient had ever lived outside Macau, nor that she had ever undergone blood transfusions or surgery. Moreover, the statement underlined that no surgery has been performed during the patient’s current hospitalisation, while all the prion-contaminated medical instruments used for her treatment have been disposed of as infectious waste by having been burnt at high temperatures.
A prion is a self-propagating misfolded conformer of a protein that is responsible for a number of diseases that affect the brain and other neural tissue.
The statement insisted that sporadic CJD, which is not linked to eating beef, is not transmitted through ordinary day-to-day contact with those affected.
The statement noted that sporadic CJD has nothing to do with the consumption of beef or beef products with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE – Mad Cow Disease), unlike the variant form of CJD. CJD is characterised by progressive dementia, ataxia (a term for a group of disorders that affect coordination, balance and speech), muscle stiffness and twitching, and blurred vision, it added.
According to the statement, Macau reported three sCJD cases in 2012, 2017 and 2019, as well as one in January this year.
This image from Wikipedia shows the magnetic resonance image of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (sCJD).
