http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=108023
A woman who was the first "guinea pig" in
the search for a cure for the human form of so-called "mad cow
disease" has died.
Rachel Forber, 20, a former soldier from Merseyside
who was diagnosed in June with variant CJD, died at home after suffering liver
complications from taking the anti-malarial drug quinacrine.
Miss Forber had initially responded well to the
treatment, at the San Francisco clinic of the Nobel Prize winner Professor
Stanley Prusiner. Within three months of taking the drug in August, she was
able to get out of bed, walk unaided and swim without support. Her recovery
raised hopes among scientists of discovering a treatment for vCJD. Experts at
the University of California found that quinacrine could help to inhibit the
formation of prions, the infectious proteins thought to damage the brain.
Miss Forber's progress prompted the Department of
Health to ask the Medical Research Council to examine the effectiveness of the
drug. Experts warned, however, that it was premature to talk of a cure for
vCJD, which is linked to eating beef infected with BSE. The disease can only be
confirmed after death, and tests using quinacrine on a second patient have
apparently failed.
Miss Forber was diagnosed six months after showing
signs of depression last Christmas. She was unable to feed or clothe herself
and could not recognise relatives. Her father, Stephen, said he consented to
the use of the drug, which had not been tested on animals, because he "had
nothing to lose and everything to gain".
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are alive.
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