30 December 2002

HELEN PEARSON

Nerves could carry prions between tongue and brain.

Tongue meat could carry a risk of infection from mad cow disease, a new report suggests1.

Tongue could contain high levels of the prion protein thought to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, say Richard Bessen and his colleagues. Prions injected into hamster brains travelled to the tongue and accumulated to relatively high levels, the team found.

This doesn't prove that cows with BSE have prion-loaded tongues, or that eating these tongues could cause human disease, says Bessen, who works at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. But guidelines on the meat allowed into the food-chain should be re-evaluated, he says.

Cattle spine and brain are barred from meat products in some European countries. In infected animals, these tissues accumulate prions. Tongue is not banned.

There are fears that infected beef is still entering the food-chain. There are also safety concerns over meat from sheep and deer with related prion diseases. Remainder

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2002