Preliminary tests show no rare brain disease in Virginia woman who died at Portsmouth Hospital

Associated Press
Published: May 7, 2008

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) - Preliminary test results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that a 22-year-old Portsmouth woman who died in April didn’t have a brain disease that has been associated with eating contaminated beef.
Richard Raymond, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for food safety, says testing of Aretha Vinson’s brain tissue showed that she didn’t die of a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The illness has been associated with mad-cow disease.
Vinson died April 9 at a Portsmouth hospital, and concerns were raised that she might have had vCJD.
A Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman said there is no threat to public health. She declined to elaborate, citing patient confidentiality issues.