(Photo: Reuters / Christian Hartmann) A young girl pets a cow as
she visits the agriculture and food fair on its opening day in
St. Gallen, Switzerland Oct. 13. In the same region, researchers
found a deceased cow that had a new form of mad cow disease. An
international team of researchers identified two Swiss cows with
a new form of mad-cow disease in a study released online Friday.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as
mad cow disease, is caused by prion proteins that become tangled
up and cause brain damage decades after infection. Humans can
become infected by the prion proteins and develop Creutzfeldt-
Jakob disease, a neurodegenerative disease, first reported in
1996. Since then, health experts have identified 217 patients
from 11 countries with the disease. Two cows died in the Swiss
countryside, an 8-year-old from an accident and a 15-year-old
that was put down, and mandatory testing gave a positive result
for BSE. Previously, scientists had uncovered three prion
variants, but