Fat cells also linked to prion infection

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 week 17 hours (www.sciencenews.org)

Researchers have confirmed that adipose cells can carry prions, or at least that healthy test animals injected with infected fat cells become sick.

Prions are small, non-living chunks of misfolded proteins that can cause diseases such as scrapie and mad cow disease.

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: proteins protein folding proteomics scrapie mad copw disease prions adipose fat Fat cells

The spreads of prion disease through sheep milk

sea-maid submitted, created time 6 months 1 week (www.newscientist.com)

Ewes infected with scrapie, the sheep equivalent of mad cow disease, can transmit the disease to lambs through their milk. Should we be worried? Does BSE spread to calves or even humans in cows' milk? And do mothers with variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of BSE, spread it to breastfeeding infants?

And after reading this study, you will find the answer.

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What can we learn from the oral intake of prions by sheep?

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www3.interscience.wiley.com)

The central nervous system is the ultimate target of prions, the agents responsible for fatal neurodegenerative diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). Now, new data on the initial steps of oral infection have been obtained in sheep. The data were obtained using surgical and biochemical procedures to modulate the efficiency of oral infection and show that, in sheep, the abnormal prion protein (PrP) associated with the infectious agent crosses the intact intestinal barrier at the level of the enterocytes and then passes rapidly into lymph

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: Prion scrapie sheep ingestion vCJD BSE TSE