Yes. The human diseases are very rare and occur sporadically worldwide at a rate of about one case per one million people.
BSE belongs to a group of progressive degenerative neurological disease known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSE diseases are always fatal.
The TSE diseases include:
- Scrapie, which affects sheep and goats
- Transmissible mink encephalopathy
- Feline (cat) spongiform encephalopathy
- Chronic wasting disease of deer and elk
There are six TSE diseased that affect people:
- Kura
- Classical Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD)
- Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)
- Gerstmmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome
- Fatal familial insomnia
- Sporadic fatal insomnia