The first complete report of Mayo Clinic physicians’ initial assessment of pork processing plant workers with a unique neurological disorder has been published online in Lancet Neurology. It includes the detailed results of the diagnostic assessment and clinical care of these patients, a description of some of the scientific investigations performed to try to understand the nature of the illness, as well as Mayo Clinic’s involvement with components of the public health investigation.
“Blood samples for each of the 24 affected patients were found to have antibodies that reacted when exposed to neural tissue,” says Daniel Lachance, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and the lead author of this paper. “This finding was new and specific to this outbreak.”
The Mayo Clinic paper describes that, as part of the public health investigation, the Minnesota Department of Health collected blood samples from 90 other individuals who worked at the Minnesota pork processing plant and appeared well and without symptoms. Testing these samples in the Mayo Clinic Neuroimmunology Lab demonstrated that the same response to the brain matter exposure that occurred in affected workers also occurred in 34 percent of the healthy individuals.
The Mayo Clinic team was able to make an additional important observation. “The antibody levels seemed to correlate directly with the distance between the point of exposure where the aerosolized brain matter was produced and the primary place in the production line at the plant where each individual worked,” says Dr. Lachance. “Not surprisingly, the closer an individual worked to the point of exposure, the higher their antibody levels.”
Mayo Clinic physicians continue to follow most of the affected patients, and the new paper reports consistent improvement in these individuals.
“In ongoing patient follow-up we’ve found that all objective measures, including physical examination findings, MRI, electrical and physiological abnormalities, are all improving over time,” says P. James B. Dyck, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist and an author of this paper. “Additionally, as we’ve measured the antibody levels over time, we’ve found that all levels have fallen, and in most instances, have nearly normalized.”
View the full news release here.
Below is a link to an edited YouTube video of Dr. Lachance providing background on the pork processing plant illness.
Below is a link to an edited YouTube video of Dr. Lachance describing the new information in the Lancet Neurology paper.
After reading of exposure to pork brain material spread by arolization I am wondering if any of this material was also spread on the whole body of the pork either by still being attached to the head or by the detached body being possibly in the same room or sent down the same moving belt at the same time or another time? We are being exposed to so many contaminations in the meat industry I am seriously thinking of becoming a vegetarian. It’s just happening too often and many times it isn’t found out right away or we just plain aren’t told due to companies being afraid of closure and loss of money. I just can’t handle it any more. It all gets down to the mighty dollar.