17 ms·
Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe
- imaginenore 11y agoPrions are fucking scary. They survive all regular decontamination procedures - alcohol, boiling, even autoclave. Patients had been infected through the sterilized scalpels and endoscopes.
- azazqadir 11y ago>>Patients had been infected through the sterilized scalpels and endoscopes. For someone who had an endoscope recently, that's really scary.
- zymhan 11y agoI mean, people were also at times infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from blood transfusions, but we realized the risk and took steps to mitigate it.
- drunken-serval 11y agoThey don't survive bleach though. Which is helpful.
- chrramirez 11y agoFor anyone who may want to know, prion diseases are sciencetific possible causes of a Zombie Apocalypse. That's why this new called my attention.
- StavrosK 11y agoBy "zombie apocalypse", you mean slow-walking infected, craving brains and infecting anyone they bite? Or just, you know, a disease that kills you if you eat brains? Because that's kind of the exact opposite of what zombies do.
- dozzie 11y ago"Braaains... Eeat my braaains..."
- lxmorj 11y agoA prion that infected people rapidly, through saliva-to-blood contact, and had similar symptoms to rabies without the rapid death would be very similar to traditional zombie lore. The protein would probably also have to effect the olfactory glands, creating an attraction to uninfected humans.
- carbocation 11y agoIt's hard to tell if you've been sincerely misled or if this is just a joke. Either way, though, it's not really plausible. The closest thing to a "zombie" that we get in nature are ants that are infected by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. This fungus causes the infected ants to crawl to a fungus-friendly location on a leaf and remain there until the fungus kills it and produces more spores.
- hodwik 11y agoI think that Rabies was the inspiration for modern zombie stuff, actually.
- maxerickson 11y agoIn the I Am Legend novella (a big contributor to modern zombie), the infected are more like vampires and retain their intelligence. The book is notable for the primary theme it introduces, the otherness of the zombies (in earlier depictions they are largely undead plot devices) Romero's Night of the Living Dead also plays with the otherness theme, but the dead are numb and more ghoulish than vampiric. 28 Days Later finally has something I would agree is rabies inspired. It probably contributed to the frantic behavior of zombies in several recent movies.
- hodwik2 11y agoI believe Rabies inspired vampires as well: from wsj "The roots of the vampire myth stretch back nearly as far. Tales of vampire-like creatures, formerly dead humans who return to suck the blood of the living, date to at least the Greeks, before rumors of their profusion in Eastern Europe drifted westward to capture the popular imagination during the 1700s. In its original imagining, though, the premodern vampire differed from today's in one crucial respect: His condition wasn't contagious. Vampires were the dead, returned to life; they could kill and did so with abandon. But their nocturnal depredations seldom served to create more of themselves. All that changed in mid-19th century England—at the very moment when contagion was first becoming understood and when public alarm about rabies was at its historical apex. Despite the fact that Britons were far more likely to die from murder (let alone cholera) than from rabies, tales of fatal cases filled the newspapers during the 1830s. This, too, was when the lurid sexual dimension of rabies infection came to the fore, as medical reports began to stress the hypersexual behavior of some end-stage rabies patients. Dubious veterinary thinkers spread a theory that dogs could acquire rabies spontaneously as a result of forced celibacy. Thus did rabies embody the two dark themes—fatal disease and carnal abandon—that underlay the burgeoning tradition of English horror tales. Britain's first popular vampire story was published in 1819 by John Polidori, formerly Lord Byron's personal physician. The sensation it caused was due largely to the fact that its vampire, a self-involved, aristocratic Lothario, distinctly resembled the author's erstwhile employer." "The Plague Behind the Zombies The undead didn't always breed by biting. For that, the mythmakers needed rabies." http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303343404577518942892486750 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023033434045775189...
- cududa 11y agoAnd he Xmen are a rough template outlining the future of human evolution.
- ajuc 11y agoReal life zombies (if they worked like the ones in movies) would all starve in the first month. Imagine if lions eat a few kg of meat from an anteople, and then the rest of the antelope turned into another lion.
- Raphmedia 11y agoIf zombies catch you and eat you, you're gone. If zombies catch you, bite you and you escape, you become a zombie. Generally it's not both at once.
- gus_massa 11y agoxkcd estimates that in a similar case humans would survive 32 months: https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/
- alexholehouse 11y agoTo be fair, this doesn't have to have originated via animal-to-animal infection, but could be an example of sporadic CWD. As far as I know, sporadic CWD is relatively uncommon, but given CWD is caused by the PrP protein, and there are a number of known mutations in PrP which can increase its likelihood of undergoing prion-conversion, I'd hope they're going to sequence this animal's PrP gene to see it it shed's some light on the etiology. Irrespective, this could still mean that CWD is now endemic in Europe. >>> Updated for clarity and extra info/context (thanks pbhjpbhj!) >>> CWD: Chronic Wasting Disease (deer-based prion disease - main topic of article) PrP: The specific prion protein involved here. Note that (confusingly!) prions are both a 'class' of proteins but also refers to a specific protein (PrP). Prions (class) are proteins which can exist in one of two states. In their soluble form they're happy-go-lucky proteins that are monomeric (i.e. exist as a single unit). However, these soluble-form prions can undergo a conformational change (re-arrange their shape) into a different conformation (the infectious form). The infectious form of the prion can do two specific things: 1) Aggregate (so all the previous soluble prion proteins get stuck into a big wad of protein) 2): Catalyze the conversion of soluble-form prion into the infectious form. Herein lies their infectivity - you get an exponential growth in the number of proteins in the infectious state. Prions (PrP) is a specific protein found in many higher-order multicellular organisms that is the SPECIFIC protein that causes a range of prion diseases (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), BSE [mad cow], CWD, Scrapie etc). There are species barriers to these diseases, even though the proteins are pretty similar (i.e. humans cannot catch CWD from deer, even though the PrP protein misfolds in CWD and the same human version misfolds in CJD). These species barriers are convenient (!!) but very poorly understood, which is somewhat concerning. Finally - it's worth point out prions aren't always bad. Fungi use them as a mechanism to facilitate non-genetic heritability/diversity [1], and we're increasingly finding examples of prion-like mechanisms that facilitate fast and irreversible signalling in cells (e.g. in the inflammation response [2]) [1] True, H. L. & Lindquist, S. L. A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity. Nature 407, 477–483 (2000). [2] Cai, X. et al. Prion-like polymerization underlies signal transduction in antiviral immune defense and inflammasome activation. Cell 156, 1207–1222 (2014).
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoChronic Wasting Disease (CWD). I'm guessing it's in the article, but, well, y'know ...
- jcromartie 11y agoThe most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not alive: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense by sterilization. The proteins must literally be dissolved to neutralize them.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hodwik 11y agoI slept through biology class, could you explain how that's not also true for virii, given that they are also not "alive"?
- danieltillett 11y agoViruses have nucleic acids which are shredded by the high temperatures used to sterilise items (121C). Dry heat will inactivate prions, but you need 200C for 4 hours or more which is more than most plastics can handle.
- hodwik 11y agoThanks. I would mention memes too, but I think 121C would shred their host as well. Edit: Actually, Carl Sagan wrote his memes in metal (and shot them into the universe) so I take that back.
- danieltillett 11y agoYes being autoclaved (this is what the process of sterilising with steam at 121C is called) is not the most pleasant way to die.
- logfromblammo 11y agoViruses have two main components. The first is the delivery package. This is the element that is capable of delivering a payload into the interior of a cell. The second is the genetic code that hijacks a cell's normal functioning to produce more viruses. Viruses have a genetic component, either RNA or DNA, which contain instructions for building their viral envelopes. The genetic material is as vulnerable to damage as cellular DNA. Prions are a single component. They are proteins with the same amino acid sequence as a protein normally produced by an organism. Except they have been misfolded. The geometry of the misfolded protein is such that it becomes a catalyst to reproduce the same misfolding error. There are no "brains" in them. They can arise entirely accidentally. They're a bit like the ice-nine from Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_, in which a crystal of a novel form of solid water that melts at a higher temperature can recruit liquid water to grow the crystal without limit. Each individual prion can misfold any number of same-sequenced amino acid chains. And like the ice-nine, which melted at a temperature above human body temperature, the prion may be able to survive through more extreme conditions than other forms of the protein. In the best case scenario, the prion does little more than cause a deficiency of the normally-folded protein forms in the body. In the worst-case scenario, it poisons some other process within the body in its misfolded form.
- shmageggy 11y agoPrions are a crazy, crazy phenomenon. From wikipedia: > A protein as a standalone infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, or both) In my layman's understanding, they're like this bizarre edge case in the way proteins interact. Of all the myriad way a protien can fold, it happens to find one that induces the same malformation when it interacts with another protein. To me, it almost seems like as much of a mathematical/geometrical problem as a biological one. In any case, very interesting from the perspective of emergent behavior in complex systems.
- danieltillett 11y agoPrions are one of those great examples that in biology every rule has an exception.
- hga 11y agoThe rule I like here is that things like viruses and prions exist because they can.
- pklausler 11y agoWhich may well be the only reason we exist, too.
- ethbro 11y agohttp://www.radiolab.org/story/cellmates/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/cellmates/ The most recent Radiolab was about an idea that the existence of cellular organelles are the product of an extremely unlikely merging of two cells that didn't immediately die afterwards. Stemming from the observation that we had an extremely long period of simple life, coupled with a sudden explosion where life rapidly increased in size and complexity. A 0.0...01% likelihood event will still happen, given an entire planet of simple cells and hundreds of millions of years.
- 11y ago
- ioquatix 11y agoI, for one, welcome our new zombie reindeer overlords.
- m_eiman 11y agoOff topic, kinda: is anyone else having problems with nature.com not resolving? Firefox and Safari both fail to load it, but for some reason Chrome manages to find the server. OSX, latest.
- jcfrei 11y agoSince when can we reliably test for prions? Could it be that those misfolded proteins have been around forever?
- FilterSweep 11y agoPossibly, but the modern age has considerably more vectors for exposure to these misfolded proteins, and the last statement of what logfromblammo said[0], these misfolding proteins don't always affect core processes of the body. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11534177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11534177
- technological 11y agoAnyone want to learn more about prion related disease Kuru .. should watch this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_tClcS6To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_tClcS6To
- Grazester 11y agoI do remember reading about this disease and its spread through cannibalism
- exhilaration 11y agoI recently learned that Chronic Wasting Disease was spreading through deer in the United States, there's a map of its spread here: http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2700&q=323412 http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2700&q=323412 Apparently it's been shown that spiker monkeys can contract it but it hasn't (yet) been shown to be transmitted to humans.
- mixmastamyk 11y agoHow does that work, considering deer are vegetarians? Or are these farmed deer being fed the last generation?
- yorwba 11y agoFrom the article linked by GP: How does CWD spread? The method of CWD transmission is unknown, however there is strong evidence to suggest that abnormally-shaped proteins called "prions" are responsible. The agent responsible for this disease may spread directly through animal to animal contact or indirectly through soil or other surface to animal contact. It is thought that the most common mode of transmission from an infected animal is via saliva and feces. A recent study confirms that CWD prions can be shed into the enviroment in feces from animals showing no clinical signs of the disease and can contaminate the soil, leading to infection in other animals. CWD can be spread from region to region by the movement of captive deer or through the improper disposal of a harvested deer transported from a CWD infected area.
- mod 11y agoCWD was just found this past deer season in my county, in the Arkansas Ozarks. They did a harvest of deer in a small area near where CWD had been found (in an Elk, actually) and found a staggering number of the deer were infect, I think it was 36%. There's virtually no way to get rid of it, apparently. Anyway, the map is slightly out-of-date.
- amorphid 11y agoToo bad DNA doesn't stick around more than a few million years [1]. It'd be interesting to research the possibility of prions wiping out the dinosaurs from Mad Herbivore Disease. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoIt does, sort of. Dinosaur dna is in every bird!
- pavel_lishin 11y agoWhy would preserved DNA help us figure this out?
- djsumdog 11y agoVery true. It wouldn't at all would it? You'd need to have actual preserved cells and protein from that era.
- mrfusion 11y agoCould a prion have been the precursor to life? Seems simpler for a protien to accidentally come into existence and start replicating than a string of rna? Or am I misunderstanding?
- debacle 11y agoIt's likely that pre-RNA life and prions shared a lot of similarities.
- gilleain 11y agoThat would be a protein that catalyses its own creation from parts (amino acids) rather than prions which catalyse a change in shape. There is a paper roughly in this area (polyphosphates and peptides in an autocatalytic cycle) here : http://cosmology.com/Abiogenesis100.html http://cosmology.com/Abiogenesis100.html
- martian 11y agoPrions are both beautiful and terrifying. One of my favorite science fiction stories is Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora". He makes great use of the prion concept, and its consequences for human life, in relation to space exploration. Fascinating read if you're interested in the topic.
- Kristine1975 11y agoThanks for the recommendation! I started reading it, and it's well-written and very interesting.
- mrkgnao 11y agoWhat does a normal reindeer brain look like?
- gus_massa 11y agoI was thinking exactly the same. Or to be more precise, is it visible in the image the damage caused by the illness? I'm not feeling lucky: https://www.google.com/search?q=reindeer+brain&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=reindeer+brain&tbm=isch
- Balgair 11y agoSince there are a lot of questions and very good discussions today, I thought I would share a good resource for bio made for comp-sci people: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wcohen/GuideToBiology-sampleChapter-release1.4.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wcohen/GuideToBiology-sampleChapter-... If anyone knows any other good resources or intros, please share as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nxzero 11y agoPrions: Killer Zombies "You Can't Kill What's Not Alive: Prions cannot be destroyed by boiling, alcohol, acid, standard autoclaving methods, or radiation. In fact, infected brains that have been sitting in formaldehyde for decades can still transmit spongiform disease. Cooking your burger until it is well done will not destroy the prions!" http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/molecules/prions/ http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/molecules/prions/ "Eating human brains helped Papua New Guinea tribe resist disease, research shows." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/10/brains-helped-papua-new-guinea-tribe https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/10/brains-helpe... Original name for the prions was "trembling in fear" - or Kuru: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
- Mahn 11y agoSo there's no cure, no vaccine, and you can't kill them. Terrifying. An outbreak of this thing would have free pass to eradicate entire species, including us.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoOh, and the incubation time can be extremely long. A burger you ate 5 years ago could've been infected but it could still be years before you begin showing signs. I remember reading a bit about some connection between prions and dementia in elderly individuals but I don't remember any of the details. One sci-fi horror series had an episode where the plot was that some mass produced chickens were getting ill because the feed was made from other chickens and they eventually discovered that it involved a prion that was dangerous to humans as well. This was discovered after massive numbers of those chickens had been consumed in large quantities by society.
- im3w1l 11y agoThat's literally what happened with the mad cow disease scare if you swap cow for chicken.
- patall 11y ago
- ckinnan 11y ago>>Although the disease is not known to be transmissible to humans This is not quite correct, the disease is believed to be transmittable to humans, but we're not in the practice of eating deer brains, so there are no confirmed cases. All of the states with CWD have advisories on reducing the risk with consumption. Eg: http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/deer-carcass-handling/ http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/deer-carc... Given that we don't really know how CWD is transmitted among animals it is still pretty worrying.
- braderhart 11y agoHas anyone else read this, because it looks really promising? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/phage-alzheimers-cure/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/phage-alzheimers-cure...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- danielsiders 11y agoAlso see the study on aerosol transmission of prions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/
- tinix 11y agoAll I can think of is this now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_wasting_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_wasting_disease
- nsajko 11y agoSource: http://www.vetinst.no/eng/Highlights/The-first-detection-of-Chronic-Wasting-Disease-CWD-in-Europe http://www.vetinst.no/eng/Highlights/The-first-detection-of-...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]