Posted on 10/18/2005 12:23:50 AM PDT by neverdem
Mystery of infections in deer and elk may have a solution.
The protein particles that cause illnesses such as mad cow disease can be found in the urine of infected mice, researchers report.
Their study may solve the mystery of how such 'prion' diseases spread among animals such as sheep, elk and deer. But it also raises concerns that the urine of humans with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) may contain dangerous proteins.
Prions are primarily found in the brain, the spinal cord and the immune system. British cows are thought to have developed the prion disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) by eating ground-up brains, spleens and similar material. Other body parts were thought to be relatively safe for consumption.
Then, in 2003, Adriano Aguzzi's group at the University Hospital of Zurich, Switzerland, found prions in the muscle tissue of people who had died from a brain wasting disease. And this January, the team showed in mice that prions also spread to the pancreas, kidneys and liver if there is inflammation in these organs. Together, these findings suggested that the brain and lymphatic organs might not be the only dangerous ones.
Now, Aguzzi and his colleagues have raised further concerns in a paper in Science1.
Protein injection
The researchers took mice with a chronic inflammation of the kidney and infected them with prions. They then concentrated the proteins in their urine tenfold and injected the mixture into the brains of healthy mice. This treatment made the mice sick.
"We knew that we had something really exciting on our hands," Aguzzi says. "I couldn't believe it."
An injection of concentrated proteins from one millilitre of urine caused prion disease in half of the treated mice, Aguzzi says.
The research may explain how animals such as sheep, elk and deer transmit prion diseases. In the United States, a chronic wasting disease is spreading "like wildfire" among elk and deer, says Aguzzi. About 20% of the wild deer in some parts of Colorado are infected, says Aguzzi, and yet these animals are herbivores.
"Nobody understands what controls the spread," says Aguzzi. Dust mites have been suggested as one method of transmission. Aguzzi adds that animals may be eating urine-contaminated grass.
Low doses
An explanation that involves urine has difficulties however. The concentration of prions found in the mouse urine in the experiment was 10,000 times lower than in the lymphatic organs, and a million times less than in the brains, the original site of infection.
Neil Cashman, a prion researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says that the risk of getting sick by touching or ingesting infected urine is minuscule. He explains that, quite apart from the low concentration of prions in urine, it would take a higher dose of the proteins to cause infection this way than through injection into the brain.
As yet, there are no data on the risk that might be attached to contact with urine from vCJD patients. On the other hand, says Cashman, "nobody wants human prions in the hospital laundry".
References: doi:10.1038/news051010-13
Seeger H. et al. Science, 310. 324 - 326 (2005)
They say there are little aliens infesting people... I don't think they're called "prions", though that actually might be the term, but it's something like that. So the first thing they do with a new convert is charge them a ton of money to go through all of these cleansing rituals to rid their bodies of all of these "prions" or whatever, these little aliens, so they'll be clean and free.
The problem with a prion is that it is almost imposable to destroy. The prion is a protein with no nucleus and it can not be destroyed even in an autoclave, it's like trying to destroy an atom of oxygen.
pardon my french, but WTF?
If this porves to be true for mad cow and humans, then there is real risk of this disease running rampant in the homosexual community, beginning in Europe.
???
If it must be spelled out, .... because they have a habit of recreating in each other's urine,
Ah, now I see.
Prions have no nucleic acids--but, Nucleic acid is NOT synonymous with Nucleus...
Cheers!
Spiroplasma as a candidate agent for the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.
Just enter Bastian FO into PubMed.
Info at "Tetracyclines affect.." indicates:
"Hamsters injected with tetracycline-treated inoculum showed a significant delay in the onset of clinical signs of disease and prolonged survival time. These effects were paralleled by a delay in the appearance of magnetic-resonance abnormalities in the thalamus, neuropathological changes, and PrPSc accumulation. When tetracycline was preincubated with highly diluted scrapie-infected inoculum, one third of hamsters did not develop disease."
Better than treatment with spit, I guess. I wonder if bourbon works any better. Someone needs to alert the University of Kentucky that a little research is needed here...
Just enter Bastian FO into the PubMed link in comment 33. He's been studying Spiroplasma since 1979. Spiroplasma is one of the weird bacteria that lack cell walls, e.g. mycoplasma, although they have cell membranes. I think F.O. Bastian might wind up getting a Nobel Prize, like the guys this year who proved that Helicobacter Pylori cause gastro-intestinal ulcers, if he can infect those critters with Spiroplasma mirum and cause scrapie, chronic wasting and mad cow disease.
The highly diluted antibiotic solution had one percent the 1 mM, i.e. one millimolar concentration.
When tetracycline was preincubated with highly diluted scrapie-infected inoculum, one third of hamsters did not develop disease.
That's not too shabby.
correction
The highly diluted antibiotic solution had one percent of the 1 mM, i.e. one millimolar concentration.
"The prion is a protein with no nucleus and it can not be destroyed even in an autoclave, it's like trying to destroy an atom of oxygen."
Think about that... maybe not a good example. :)
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