BRITAIN could be on the brink of an epidemic of variant CJD as scientists fear that many more people are carrying the disease than previously thought.

An upturn in the number of cases of the human form of mad cow disease is not a blip but a "sustained pattern", says a scientist investigating the illness.

People living in the north of England and Scotland are more than twice as likely to get variant CJD, the human form of mad cow disease, a leading scientist said today.