Hidden Prions a Public Health Threat Say Experts

Prions are best known for causing Mad Cow disease, but also are linked to Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and huge variety of protein misfolding or "conformational" disorders and diseases. This article summarizes some of the research showing species barriers don't count for much with prions. [Good job, Ms. Stone.]

Hidden Prions a Public Health Threat Say Experts

By showing that spleen tissue is up to sevenfold more receptive to foreign prions than that of the brain, Vincent Béringue PhD, and colleagues at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in Jouy-en-Josas, France, recently challenged the long-held notion of absolute species barriers. What this suggests is that testing brain tissue, rather than lymphatic tissue, of animals destined for the dinner table is very misleading. Furthermore, say these scientists, most prion disease will likely remain silent for the lifetimes of the hosts, making infection very difficult to spot.

* Species-Jumping Prions Propagate Silently in Lymphoid Tissue With no Detectable Signs of Brain Disease....

* Experts Call for Expanded Prion Surveillance....

* Silent Infection with vCJD....

* Prions Spread Within Species and Across Species Barriers....

* Why a More Aggressive Search for Prions is So Important

It now appears that not only is the transmission barrier keeping these odd pathogenic proteins from easily jumping to you from that steak on your plate more porous than previously thought, it also seems that authorities might not always be testing the right tissue. As William A. Rutala PhD and David J. Weber MD point out in their 2010 paper: “Prion diseases elicit no immune response, result in a pathologic process confined to the central nervous system, have an incubation period of years, and usually are fatal within 1 year after diagnosis.” These are not diseases to be treated casually.

More info:

Misfolded protein aggregates: mechanisms, structures and potential for disease transmission.

Some of the most prevalent human degenerative diseases appear as a result of the misfolding and aggregation of proteins. Compelling evidence suggest that misfolded protein aggregates play an important role in cell dysfunction and tissue damage, leading to the disease. Prion protein (Prion diseases), amyloid-beta (Alzheimer's disease), alpha-synuclein (Parkinson's disease), Huntingtin (Huntington's disease), serum amyloid A (AA amyloidosis) and islet amyloid polypeptide (type 2 diabetes) are some of the proteins that trigger disease when they get misfolded. The recent understanding of the crucial role of misfolded proteins as well as the structural requirements and mechanism of protein misfolding have raised the possibility that these diseases may be transmissible by self-propagation of the protein misfolding process in a similar way as the infamous prions transmit prion diseases. Future research in this field should aim to clarify this possibility and translate the knowledge of the basic disease mechanisms into development of novel strategies for early diagnosis and efficient treatment.

The Risk of Prion Zoonoses.

Prions are lethal infectious pathogens that cause neurodegenerative diseases in humans and animals (1). They can pass from one species to another but with greater difficulty than transmission within the same species because of the so-called species barrier effect. Such barriers protect humans from developing prion disease after dietary or other exposure to animal reservoirs of infection. These include endemic scrapie of sheep and goats, chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” (1). On page 472 of this issue, Béringue et al. (2) show that in transgenic mice expressing ovine or human prion protein (PrP), lymphoid tissue is more susceptible to cross-species transmission than neural tissue (brain), which may prompt a reevaluation of the effectiveness of species barriers.

Facilitated Cross-Species Transmission of Prions in Extraneural Tissue.

Prions are infectious pathogens essentially composed of PrPSc, an abnormally folded form of the host-encoded prion protein PrPC. Constrained steric interactions between PrPSc and PrPC are thought to provide prions with species specificity and to control cross-species transmission into other host populations, including humans. We compared the ability of brain and lymphoid tissues from ovine and human PrP transgenic mice to replicate foreign, inefficiently transmitted prions. Lymphoid tissue was consistently more permissive than the brain to prions such as those causing chronic wasting disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Furthermore, when the transmission barrier was overcome through strain shifting in the brain, a distinct agent propagated in the spleen, which retained the ability to infect the original host. Thus, prion cross-species transmission efficacy can exhibit a marked tissue dependence.

Also see: Guideline for Disinfection and Sterilization of Prion-Contaminated Medical Instruments. (2010).

Prion diseases seem to be one of the worst ways to die in my opinion. They should start teaching more about prions in health/biology classes in school. They really only focus on germs and viruses. I don't think most people have even heard about them.



www.wired.com...

I always enjoy your threads.

Never heard of this but I think it would be wise to take it into consideration. Will it kill the Prions if you cook your food properly or should I just go ahead and become a vegetarian? The more I learn about eating dead animals and the way we prepare food the closer I am to making the jump. Can you get this from fish or vegetables?

Since most animal species utilize the same protiens, it's not really suprising that prions can jump species.
I wonder when big pharma will come up with a new vaccine to infect us all when their fear mongering ways realize there is money to be made.

More 2012 doom

reply to post by anthonygillespie2012


What does 2012 have to do with prion diseases?

A couple million Americans are infected each year.......

reply to post by RealSpoke

Are prion infections limited to just what someone can pick up from eating animal flesh? I remember reading somewhere that irradiation also creates prions in food--which has me thinking--I love to put dried oregano in my salads. Spices, unless stated otherwise, are generally irradiated...

This is a deeply disturbing finding - prion diseases are frightening. Anybody else thinking John Titor? It was a mad cow like disease that he listed as the initial devastation.

reply to post by RealSpoke


Great vid - thanks.

And thanks for the compliment too.

reply to post by ProfATS

Never heard of this but I think it would be wise to take it into consideration.

No kidding.

Will it kill the Prions if you cook your food properly or should I just go ahead and become a vegetarian? The more I learn about eating dead animals and the way we prepare food the closer I am to making the jump. Can you get this from fish or vegetables?

There are proteins in virtually every form of life, and virtually any protein can misfold and potentially become infectious - it's how proteins adapt to environmental change. And those adaptations DO trickle up or "cascade."

Me, I eat anything and everything, preferably NOT factory farmed. The theory is that prions tend to do battle with one another, and the host comes out ahead.

reply to post by manicminxx

Are prion infections limited to just what someone can pick up from eating animal flesh? I remember reading somewhere that irradiation also creates prions in food--which has me thinking--I love to put dried oregano in my salads. Spices, unless stated otherwise, are generally irradiated...

Everything living has proteins, and virtually any protein can misfold and potentially become infectious. Proteins misfold in response to environmental change, so the list of things that make them misfold is long - including radiation and chemical exposure, temperature changes, and more.

FYI - it's not just irradiated and other processed foods you should worry about, but also meds (the manufacturing process can create prions).

Never know could lead to this...

reply to post by Nightspore

This is a deeply disturbing finding - prion diseases are frightening.

Better the info is out in the open and being researched than brushed under the rug and ignored.

...I don't find prions or prion diseases frightening any more - looks like understanding them is the key to understanding adaptation and evolution - I think they are cool and very, very interesting.

reply to post by soficrow


I agree wholeheartedly. I am glad that there are people finding this interesting - and yes the findings should be distributed of course!. But it still scares the crap outta me.

reply to post by ProfATS



Any heat that would damage the prion would make your dinner very unedible.

I've heard they prions don't denature until their cooked at extremely high heats..

www.nytimes.com...

reply to post by lonegurkha

Since most animal species utilize the same protiens, it's not really suprising that prions can jump species.

Looks like they jump kingdom and domain barriers too.

I wonder when big pharma will come up with a new vaccine to infect us all when their fear mongering ways realize there is money to be made.

...Seems the vaccine manufacturing process creates prions too - not surprising, really. Some years ago, the FDA's Mad Cow Vaccine Committee (whatever it was called) determined that there were so many prions contaminating vaccines that there was no point filtering out just one (Mad Cow).

This information and fear mongering comes from mainstream medical, and yet so many will believe it without consideration. Has it ever occurred to any of you that a certain prion could be an evolutionary element that certain genetic codes will adapt to, thereby altering DNA structure to something never before seen? You all have a mind and soul of your own- use them and learn to understand the infinite possibilities of the Universe.

reply to post by Quantum Logic


I'd.. find this highly unlikely.

Evolution generally works to remove individuals that have brains that look like swiss cheese from the population.

reply to post by Quantum Logic

This information and fear mongering comes from mainstream medical, and yet so many will believe it without consideration.

This is not fear mongering - at all. The information is accurate, important and relevant to public health and understanding disease. Especially the chronic disease NCD Pandemic currently underway, and killing 37 million people this year alone.

Has it ever occurred to any of you that a certain prion could be an evolutionary element that certain genetic codes will adapt to, thereby altering DNA structure to something never before seen? You all have a mind and soul of your own- use them and learn to understand the infinite possibilities of the Universe.

Erm. Check out some of my other prion threads, if not my posts here. Here are a few to get you started:

Beyond DNA! Prions Point to a New Form of Evolution (VIDEO)

Prions are misfolded proteins, and proteins misfold in response to environmental disruptions and changes. It's an evolutionary mechanism.

Prion Proteins Play Powerful Role in Survival, Evolution

'Lifeless' Prion Proteins Are 'Capable of Evolution'