THE prospect of a second wave of vCJD cases caused by the BSE epidemic now seems more likely.
All the 142 deaths from the human form of BSE in the UK have so far occurred in people with a set of genes that seems to make them susceptible to the disease. But last week it was reported that someone with a different genotype had been found to be incubating vCJD after dying of other causes (The Lancet, vol 364, p 527). Half of the population has the same genotype, so the discovery is ominous.
“What this finding indicates is that the largest genetic subgroup is…
