Swiss researchers said on Thursday they found infectious proteins in the muscle tissue of patients who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and said the finding may suggest the rare and fatal brain disease could be passed on during standard surgery. The study, published in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also raises the question of whether mad cow disease -- bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- might be passed on in muscle tissue and not simply in brain, lymph and spleen tissue.
