Four cases of rare brain disease reported in Fraser Valley region of B.C.

VANCOUVER – Health officials in British Columbia are investigating the appearance of four cases of a rare, degenerative brain disease in the Fraser Valley.

Only 30 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are reported annually in Canada, so provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says the occurrence is a statistical blip.

One strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has been linked with mad cow disease, but Kendall says the strain the four in the Fraser Valley may be suffering from has nothing to do with eating infected cows.

One of the patients is now dead and Kendall says officials have taken a brain sample and sent it to the national lab for diagnosis, but the diagnosis on the other three who are in hospital will likely have to occur post-mortem.

According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than 80 per cent of cases of the disease are not linked to infected cows.