UK doctors fear case of mother-to-baby CJD

　　Doctors in britain believe that a baby has been bor n with the human form of the deadly "mad cow " disease, a newspaper reported recently.

　　A report in the Sunday telegraph said four speciali st doctors who examined the 11-month old girl, whose mo ther died of new variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease(vCJD )earlier this year, believe she has the symptoms.

　　The baby, who was seven months old when her mother died, has brain damage and suffers from fits and convul sions(抽搐)

　　A final analysis on whether the child has cCJD coul d only be made with a post mortem examination if the ch ild dies. If the child's disease were confirmed, it wou ld be the first knwo casr of vCJD being transmitted fro m the mother to her baby.

　　The latest government figures showed that the numbe r of "definite and probable" cases of the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy(BSE)(海绵状病毒性恼病)had rise n to 79 from 77 in the previous month.

　　Mad cow disease first broke out in british herds in 1986 and peaked in 1992. Four years later scientsts ide ntified vCJD and suggested it could be contracted by ea ting contaminated beef.

　　Dozens of people have died in britain from vCJD, wh ich destroys the brains of its victims.