Mad Cow Disease Symptoms

Mad Cow Disease Symptoms
Bovine Spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as mad cow disease, is a cattle disease that fiercely attacks the central nervous system. This means that the disease will move through the spinal cord all the way to the brain, killing all brain cells literally and leaving holes behind. The primary effect of the disease is an insane behavior in the infected cow. This disease is transmittable to humans who consume contaminated meat from the sick cows, making the disease all the more threatening as it imperils the food supply and consumers lives.

Mad cow disease symptoms however need to be elucidated as there are some manifestations of this disease that aren't related to humans consuming the infected meat, a condition referred to as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Note however that when there is a vague link between mad cow and consumers of the infected beef, the condition will be referred to as a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob or simply vCJD.

The early symptoms of mad cow disease, particularly with vCJD, are normally psychiatric in nature which include such things as mood swings i.e. depression and anxiety, CJD sufferers are also highly likely to develop dementia in the early stages, although it can also be a later manifestation of mad cow disease. An individual suffering from mad cow disease can stay in this early anxious or depressed state or a vacillation of the two states for even a year before they experience memory loss, impaired cognitive function, and concentration failure.

Insomnia is another common symptom of the mad cow disease, regardless of the variant, which as it is known may fuel anxiety and depression. Vision becomes blurry as time goes on, and muscle coordination will equally deteriorate. Sadly, mad cow disease becomes extremely severe as it progresses. Mental instability will worsen and may force patients to get complete care. As the disease progresses, other parts of the body will start failing too, worst of all the heart.

Because it affects the brain, the damage will be so severe to a point that the brain will not have the ability to sustain the body, subjecting one to high chances of coma. Needless to mention, when on a comatose, the respiratory system will fail and more often than not, death ensues mostly from bronchial and lung infections like the dreaded pneumonia. These quite devastating mad cow disease symptoms will march steadily for an average period of up to 7 years.