Test confirms Cape patient has rare brain disease

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

An elderly patient on Cape Cod has tested positive for a rare brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, state public health officials announced this afternoon.

Each year in Massachusetts, six or seven people are diagnosed with the degenerative disorder, which in most cases leads to rapid death.

The disease, known for decades among neurologists, first came to widespread public attention during the mad cow scare of the 1980s, when cases of the disorder were linked to tainted beef in the United Kingdom. But only three such cases have ever been identified in the United States, and all of those were in patients who had come from Great Britain.

Further tests will be conducted to determine the cause of the Cape patient's illness, but state disease trackers said there is nothing to suggest that the patient's case is associated with mad cow disease. Instead, like virtually all cases in the United States, it is almost certainly not linked to any obvious external cause.