Table 2. Results of nonparametric correlation analyses between number of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) cases and the 3 studied exposure sources*.
| Countries and vCJD case-patients included in analysis | Exposure |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Indigenous BSE cases (CI, p value) | Live bovines imported from UK, 1980–1990 (CI, p value)† | Carcass meat imported from UK, 1980–1996 (CI, p value)† | |
| All EU network countries | |||
| Patients likely to have been infected in UK excluded | rs = 0.70 (CI 0.37–0.87, p = 0.001) | rs = 0.73 (0.42–0.89, p<0.001) | rs = 0.75 (0.45–0.89, p<0.001) |
| Patients likely to have been
infected in UK included |
rs = 0.60
(0.21–0.82, p = 0.005) |
rs = 0.63
(0.26–0.84, p = 0.003) |
rs = 0.64
(0.27–0.84, p = 0.003) |
| All EU network countries plus Japan and Saudi Arabia | |||
| Patients likely to have been infected in UK excluded | rs = 0.55 (0.17–0.79, p = 0.008) | rs = 0.65 (0.31–0.84, p = 0.001) | rs = 0.73 (0.45–0.88, p<0.001) |
| Patients likely to have been
infected in UK included |
rs = 0.51
(0.11–0.77, p = 0.02) |
rs = 0.52
(0.13–0.77, p = 0.01) |
rs = 0.57
(0.19–0.80, p = 0.006) |
| All countries except France | |||
| Patients likely to have been infected in UK excluded | rs = 0.48 (0.06–0.75, p = 0.03) | rs = 0.60 (0.23–0.81, p = 0.005) | rs = 0.68 (0.36–0.86, p = 0.001) |
| Patients likely to have been infected in UK included | rs = 0.44 (0.01–0.73, p = 0.05) | rs = 0.44 (0.01–0.73, p = 0.05) | rs = 0.49 (0.08–0.76, p = 0.02) |
*BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy; UK, United Kingdom; EU, European Union; CI, confidence interval; rs Spearman rank correlation coefficient. †Weighted by the temporal distribution of the export in relation to the size of the BSE epizootic in the UK.