This summer, five patients that underwent surgery at a Cape Cod hospital may have been exposed to a fatal brain disease, reports CNN.  The condition, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, may have come from specialized medical equipment that was contaminated.  These five patients all underwent spinal cord surgery and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health indicates that their risk of infection is low.

Concerns were raised about the equipment after one patient that underwent brain surgery at Catholic Medical Center in New Hampshire died.  An autopsy is being conducted to confirm whether or not Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was responsible.  The equipment in New Hampshire and Massachusetts was from Medtronic.  Normal sterilization does not kill the proteins responsible for this disease.

According to Medical Daily, the equipment has been quarantined.  Some of the New Hampshire equipment had been rented to other hospitals, which may explain how the contaminated equipment also presented itself in Cape Cod.  Risk of developing the condition after the brain or nervous system is exposed is less than one percent.  In general, the disease appears more often in older people.

The Mayo Clinic describes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as a degenerative brain disorder.  Symptoms of the condition are similar to dementia, but progression of the disease is much more rapid with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.  A form of this disease is well-known after it spread around the United Kingdom in the 1990s as a result of eating contaminated beef.  This variant is better known as “mad cow disease.”  The mad cow disease variant is generally even rarer than standard Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the standard disease is, on average, seen in one of every one million people worldwide.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, this disease is not transmitted through the air, touching, or most forms of casual contact.  As a result, the medical professionals that handled the contaminated equipment are not at risk.  For the patients that have been exposed, their spouses and family members are no more likely to also become exposed than members of the general public.  They would only be at risk if they somehow came into contact with the brain tissue and spinal cord fluid from an infected individual.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has been recognized since the 1920s, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In the U.S., there have been between 279 and 352 cases in the last five-year period studied.  While mad cow disease is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, it is not actually related to standard or classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.