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Two new drug treatments for variant CJD, the human version of mad cow
disease, will be tested in Britain. A team led by Carsten Korth and Stanley
Prusiner at the University of California, San Francisco, has found that both
drugs—already used to treat malaria and schizophrenia—halt the
progress of the disease in cell culture. A 20-year-old British woman with vCJD
is reported to have shown marked improvement following treatment, but a second
patient is said to be no better. The Department of Health says the drugs could
be tested on seven British vCJD patients as soon as trials are approved.