8 NH patients notified of possible exposure to fatal brain disease

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP)

Eight patients who may have been exposed to a fatal brain disease at a New Hampshire hospital have been contacted by the hospital's president, who said Thursday the patients aren't panicking.

Dr. Joseph Pepe called the Catholic Medical Center patients a day after health officials announced that they may have been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease - a brain disease characterized by rapidly progressive dementia which can cause death within months after symptoms first appearing. It has no treatment or cure.

Officials believe the extremely rare disease caused the August death of a patient who had brain surgery at the hospital in May, and they say there's a remote chance it was transmitted to other brain surgery patients because the abnormal proteins that cause the disease can survive standard sterilization practices.

The patient's cause of death won't be certain until an autopsy is complete but officials believe it was caused by Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

In addition to the eight Catholic Medical Center patients, up to five more in other states also may have been exposed because some of the surgical instruments were rented and passed on to other hospitals.

About 200 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are recorded annually in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health, with the vast majority occurring spontaneously. In fewer than 1 percent of cases, the disease is transmitted by exposure to brain or nervous system tissue, and there have been only four reported cases of transmission via surgical instruments. None of those were in the United States, and the most recent case was in 1976, Pepe said.