mad cow disease

TWiV 950: Prion diseases with Richard Knight

From the European Society for Clinical Virology 2022 Conference in Manchester UK, Vincent speaks with Richard Knight about prion diseases and the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalitis that led to cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Host: Vincent Racaniello Guest: Richard Knight Click arrow to playDownload TWiV 950 (68 MB .mp3, 114 min)Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become …

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TWiV 424: FLERVergnügen

Trudy joins the the TWiVlords to discuss new tests for detecting prions in the blood, and evidence showing that foamy retroviruses originated in the seas with their jawed vertebrate hosts at least 450 million years ago. You can find TWiV #424 at microbe.tv/twiv, or listen below. [powerpress url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV424.mp3″] Click arrow to play Download TWiV 424 (67 MB .mp3, …

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A blood test for prion disease

A sensitive and specific blood test has been developed that could be used to limit the risk of transmission of prion disease through the blood supply (link to papers one and two). Prion diseases, also known as spongiform encephalopathies, are uniformly fatal, chronic degenerative neurological diseases caused by misfolding of a cellular protein, PrPC. Transmissible …

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A case of prion disease acquired from contaminated beef

Spongiform encephalopathies are neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of normal cellular prion proteins. A 2014 case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob prion disease in the United States was probably caused by eating beef from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. Human spongiform encephalopathies are placed into three groups: infectious, familial or genetic, and sporadic, distinguished by how the disease …

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Resistance to prion disease in humans

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are rare human neurodegenerative disorders that are caused by infectious proteins called prions. A naturally occurring variant of the human prion has been found that completely protects against the disease. A protective variant of the prion protein was discovered in the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Beginning in the early 1900s, the prion disease kuru spread among Fore women and children as …

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