--- title: Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease | TIME description: More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal, incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you’d least expect it: inside a hospital. canonical: https://time.com/video/FbgKlz3U/ og:title: Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease og:description: More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal, incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you’d least expect it: inside a hospital. og:url: https://time.com/video/FbgKlz3U/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FbgKlz3U/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease twitter:description: More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal, incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you’d least expect it: inside a hospital. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FbgKlz3U/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease [Watch (HLS stream): Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FbgKlz3U.m3u8) (1:39)  _Published 2014-02-11. More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal, incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you’d least expect it: inside a hospital._ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:13 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Playing Youth Tackle Football Is Linked to Earlier Symptoms of Brain Disease](/video/f95sEkOz/) ### Playing Youth Tackle Football Is Linked to Earlier Symptoms of Brain Disease [Moment of the Exposion In Ankara](/video/JvsVU74q/) ### Moment of the Exposion In Ankara [This Is Your Brain on Football](/video/LQwnjRmf/) ### This Is Your Brain on Football --- ## Transcript >> More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you'd least expect it, inside a hospital. Officials at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston- Salem, North Carolina told reporters Monday, it's possible that 18 neurological patients were exposed to Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease, or CJD. According to the hospital, surgeons operated on a patient January 18th who later tested positive for CJD. And an oversight may cause a big problem for some of those patients. >> Doctors sterilized the instruments that they used by standard hospital procedures, but they should have gone through a more thorough cleaning process, instead. >> According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CJD is a rare brain disease that progressive quickly, and is always fatal. The disorder kills 90 percent of patients within one year. CJD is also rare. The National Institutes of Health say only about 200 cases are recorded in the U. S. each year. And it's difficult to transmit the disease via surgical instruments. In fact, according to CNN, no cases of the disease have been linked to the use of contaminated medical equipment since 1976. So, the exposed patients could be okay. But it could also take quite some time before those 18 people affected can determine if they have CJD or not. According to a statement released by the hospital, the disease's incubation period can last for years. And then, after the first sign of symptoms, patients die in an average of four months. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Patients Possibly Exposed To Rare Brain Disease","description":"More than a dozen people may have been exposed to a fatal, incurable brain disease last month in North Carolina. And it all happened where you’d least expect it: inside a hospital.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FbgKlz3U/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-02-11T17:17:15.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FbgKlz3U.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/FbgKlz3U/","duration":"PT1M39S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/FbgKlz3U/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```