In a scattershot pattern that now extends from coast to coast, continental US states have been announcing new hotspots of chronic wasting disease (CWD).
The contagious and always-fatal neurodegenerative disorder infects the cervid family that includes deer, elk, moose and, in higher latitudes, reindeer. There is no vaccine or treatment.
Prions are one of the scariest things on this planet.
They’re downright awful. They can survive much higher temperatures than most other pathogens which means cooking often fails to destroy them.
Yeah it’s like 800+ degrees to “kill” it. As prions aren’t alive, they can’t really be killed, just destroyed. And they last for years in the natural environment.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3160281/
And get into the plants growing from that ground, infecting animals who eat them. Prion diseases are seriously scary, and I wish we were putting more effort into finding a cure.
How do you cure a protein in a stable shape?
That’s all a prion is, it’s just a misshapen but stable protein that causes other proteins to fold into that stable shape too.
You can’t vaccinate against a shape.
We can’t scan every protein in a body and selectively destroy the ones that shaped wrong.
The only thing to do is to destroy prions whenever they are found and with extreme prejudice. But, that’s expensive so it won’t get done.
I don’t know how it could be cured, but just because we don’t currently know of a way to do it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Surely research hasn’t exhausted all possibilities?
Self-replicating protein fibers growing like plant roots through brain tissue? The only thing I can think of that would be worse is that fungus that infects an ant’s brain and makes it go crazy.
Thank you for the links. I already knew about prions, but I’d never seen the Med Twins before. A channel where an attractive young man talks about medical science in a foreign accent? You just found my catnip.
I didn’t even know it was my catnip until I found it, and I typically tend more toward the Cleo Abrams and Up and Atom types. But gosh, Manuel’s dark, kind eyes, compassionate and informed tone, and natural bedside manner really took some of the edge off the horror of prion diseases. Like, if he were the one who had to break the news to me that I had CJD and only had one torturous year remaining, it’d be slightly more palatable.
Fr. CWD is a major reason I avoid venison. It hasn’t made the jump yet, but damn if I’m going to be the 1st.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
Hmm.
Hunters have been diagnosed with the human equivalent shortly after eating infected venison. There’s no proven causal link, but it seems like quite a coincidence.
Pretty sure they have kits you can use to send for testing for it if you hunt