We know experimentally that it is quite difficult for the infective agent to cause infection by oral route in mice. Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease is one of a family of diseases known as spongiform encephalopathies that attack the brain. Like BSE, first diagnosed in 1986, it is a poorly understood condition that attacks the brain, leaving it full of holes like a bath sponge. Variant CJD is a new strain of the disease first officially recognised in April 1996. Scientists are now convinced that it is really BSE that has jumped the species barrier and taken on a human guise.
Victims display symptoms of dementia, becoming unsteady and confused and losing their memory.
As the brain degenerates, they decline to a state where they cannot walk, talk or look after themselves. There is no known cure.