A 59-year-old man presented with confusion, decreased level of consciousness, and generalized tonic–clonic seizures. He was intubated and promptly stabilized on antiepileptic medications. He was not in status epilepticus. He improved after seizure control, though he remained confused. He was neither acutely intoxicated nor were there any substance withdrawal concerns prior to his presentation. Furthermore, no metabolic, electrolyte, or nutritional perturbations were identified. He did, however, have a history of alcoholic hepatitis and was awaiting a liver transplant, but his blood work did not reveal evidence of fulminant hepatic failure at presentation (international normalized ratio – 1.17, platelet count 161,000/µL, ammonia 18 µmol/L, blood urea nitrogen 4.5 mmol/L, and his liver enzymes were only remarkable for an elevated alkaline phosphatase of 143 U/L).

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a fatal neurological illness for which accurate diagnosis is paramount. Real-time quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) is a prion-specific assay with high sensitivity and specificity for CJD. The Canadian endpoint quaking-induced conversion (EP-QuIC) test is similar, but unlike RT-QuIC there is little data regarding its diagnostic utility in clinical practice. In this exploratory predictive value analysis of EP-QuIC in CJD, the negative predictive value (NPV) and positive predictive value (PPV) was 100% and 83%, respectively, with one false-positive result identified. Re-testing this sample with an optimized EP-QuIC protocol eliminated this false-positive result, leading to a PPV of 100%.

On February 11, 2015, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced that a cow born and raised in Alberta had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease. BSE is a prion disease of cattle that, when transmitted to humans, produces a fatal neurodegenerative disease known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. We believe that this latest case of BSE in Canadian cattle suggests the timeliness of a review of the management of BSE in Canada from a historically and scientifically informed perspective. In this article, we ask: how did the Canadian management of BSE between 1990 and 2014 engage with the contemporary understanding of BSE’s human health implications? We propose that Canadian policies largely ignored the implicit medical nature of BSE, treating it as a purely agricultural and veterinary issue. In this way, policies to protect Canadians were often delayed and incomplete, in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of Britain’s failed management of BSE. Despite assurances to the contrary, it is premature to conclude that BSE (and with it the risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) is a thing of Canada’s past: BSE remains very much an issue in Canada’s present.