12 ms·
New Brunswick monitoring more than 40 cases of unknown neurological disease
- goda90 6y ago>A first case was diagnosed in 2015, according to the memo. Three years later, in 2019, 11 additional cases were discovered, with 24 more cases discovered in 2020 and another six cases in 2021. Five people have died. So not 40 cases all at once in case anyone was worried.
- thatguy0900 6y agoThat would probably be less worrying to me, would indicate whatever got them is now gone, right? Rather than it is something that has stuck around to poison more people within 5 years
- bawolff 6y agoOr it just takes a variable amount of time for symptoms to show up. (Wikipedia says kuro which is a prion disease can take up to 50 years! Although maybe thats related to immunity which seems irrelavent here)
- thatguy0900 6y agoDidn't think about that, fair point
- JauntTrooper 6y agoIf it's a prion disease, they sometimes take years or possibly decades to develop. The big question is how they were all infected. Is it in the food supply (meat, milk)? Was it tainted blood donations? 42 people is a lot of people... The vCJD outbreak in the 90s (mad cow) ended up with less than 250 cases total.
- me_me_me 6y agoJeez don't even suggest that. If that shit jumped to humans we are fucked. I'd rather not imagine how that would look like in comparison to covid
- dwohnitmok 6y agoIt already jumped to humans. Mad cow disease infects humans as well. The difference in infection levels is that mad cow disease is transmitted through ingestion, so the usual avenue for human-to-human transmission is cannibalism (see e.g. the outbreak of Kuru that resulted from ritual funerary cannibalism), which is rare. Animal-to-animal cannibalism in animal feed is more common.
- subsubzero 6y agoI wonder if fully cooked meat can also transmit this disease? I know its big deal eating tainted meat as all hunters are encouraged to have the meat tested before consumption. there have been alot of deer that have been shown to have this disease.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoFully cooked meat can also transmit prion-based diseases, because cooking isn't hot enough to destroy the prions. IIRC, you need 1500 degrees (Fahrenheit, I think). Your stove or grill isn't going to get you there, no matter how thoroughly you cook the meat.
- seventytwo 6y agoWouldn’t the deactivation temp depend on the prion?
- ruined 6y agoSure, but most prion diseases are confirmed to be resultant from various misfolding of a single protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRNP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRNP
- molticrystal 6y agoOne of the problems with prions is they tend to be very stable and stick around in the environment for a long time, even resiting heat, cold, and persisting for years in soil. To add on to that, when active in a human being, they can take a very long time to get to a point where symptoms emerge.
- yumraj 6y ago> So not 40 cases all at once in case anyone was worried Yep, not connected to the mRNA vaccines. :)
- tyingq 6y agoShould be interesting to see how long it takes to figure out how it's being transmitted. What all those 40 people had in common...some lake, or medical procedure, etc, that they all had. Assuming it is a prion disease... Apparently prions are pretty hard to kill off, the sterilization procedures are pretty long. https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/infection-control.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/infection-control.html
- davesque 6y agoYeah, I'm not an expert but I've heard experts discuss it as though they're almost impossible to sterilize. As a layman, I imagine this has something to do with the fact that your task is essentially to break down a molecule (a protein) instead of a structure of molecules (a virus or bacteria particle). Heat may not be very effective and the likelihood that you eliminate all the prions to the point that they'd have no effect is lower.
- ben_w 6y agoAlso not a chemist, but you’ve made me notice my confusion: Aren’t proteins generally easy to denature? Isn’t that what most cooking does? And what alcohol does?
- davesque 6y agoNo idea, honestly. As I mentioned, I'm not an expert.
- subungual 6y agoSo denaturing a protein generally involves interfering with the noncovalent interactions (e.g. hydrogen bonds, attractions between internal charges) that allow it to fold into the right functional shape. Often times, these proteins folded under conditions that carefully facilitated their coming out the right way, so simply removing the denaturing stimulus (e.g. allowing them to cool) won't result in a reversion to their former configuration. This is what you see, for example, in cooking, where there's a discrete change that doesn't revert. Prions are generally much more stable and can revert back to dangerous form once denaturing conditions change back. It takes a lot more to denature them irreversibly than it does most proteins. This stability is part of what makes them so dangerous and difficult to remove.
- sprainedankles 6y agoYikes, I grew up in that area (on the U.S. side) and my neighbor down the street passed away from a disease related to mad cow disease about 10 years ago. The article lists mad cow as a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease...I wonder if this is what he had? The area is largely agricultural, and the cancer rate for that region is high compared to the rest of the state (Maine). Hmm.
- tyingq 6y ago"The article lists mad cow as a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" That's not quite right, though they are both prion diseases. See https://www.cdc.gov/prions/ https://www.cdc.gov/prions/
- sprainedankles 6y agoGood call, thanks for the clarification!
- dnautics 6y agoNo mad cow disease is quite literally Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, it's vCJD, with v standing for "variant", to specifically distinguish it from "normal" CJD which is heritable. usually CJD is caused by a specific mutation in the human prion protein that renders its susceptible to turning into plaques; vCJD does not require this mutation and happens in wild type protein, though it's unclear if other heritable factors can contribute to susceptibility. (I worked in a protein plaque lab and did a small, inconclusive experiment about cross species CJD transfer)
- tyingq 6y agoSince the article was (I believe) referring to classic CJD, I linked the CDC page because it includes this text: "Classic CJD is not related to “mad cow” disease. Classic CJD also is distinct from “variant CJD“, another prion disease that is related to BSE."
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- en4bz 6y agoI wonder if Chronic Wasting Disease has finally jumped to humans given that NB has a large number of Deer/Moose hunters.
- frabbit 6y agoNot to mention Rappie Pie https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2020/03/17/some-in-quinan-nova-scotia-were-skeptical-people-would-pay-to-eat-game-meat-but-the-annual-wild-game-fundraising-dinner-sells-out-every-year.html https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2020/03/17/some-in-qu...
- mc32 6y agoCWD is a prion disease. Mad cow disease is also a prion disease. In humans it’s called vCJD so we know prion diseases in cattle affect people.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoAll known prion based chronic wasting diseases have been rules out, according to the article.
- stonecraftwolf 6y agoFuck I hope not. I just googled the CWD occurrence map in the US. It’s...very scary.
- goatcode 6y ago>Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and some of its variants, including mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. I thought CJD and BSE were the same thing.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y agovCJD is the human variant of BSE.
- goatcode 6y agoNot being a biologist, I'll ask what might be a dumb question: If the essential elements of each disease are compared, is there a difference? Are the prions associated with each disease different from one another? If so, is there a difference elsewhere that defines between one disease and the other?
- m00x 6y agoHere's good information on the matter: https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1169688-overview#:~:text=Bovine%20spongiform%20encephalopathy%20(BSE)%2C,transmissible%20spongiform%20encephalopathies%20(TSEs) https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1169688-overview#:~:t....
- goatcode 6y agoThanks! I did a bit of digging around, and it looks like the BSE-causing prion can rarely, on ingestion, cause prion formation that causes CJD. So, if I understand correctly, it's not exactly a disease that transmits like a virus, it's one that is induced by the transmission of a diseased particle (the cow prion) when it goes form cows to humans. BSE and CJD seem to be the result of the transmission and induction of the respective prions. It seems comparable to a cow being on fire, and a human catching fire from it -- the latter is a human fire, and the former is a cow fire. Unless I really got that wrong, interesting!
- wiz21c 6y agoNot entirely related, but how many new diseases are discovered every year ? For example we have new coronavirus every now and then, but what else ?
- InitialLastName 6y agoI don't know the answer, but I suspect this is actually multiple questions: - How many diseases do we learn to distinguish (i.e. from other diseases) every year as our biological laboratory technology improves. You can imagine that once upon a time, there were multiple strains of coronaviruses in humans, but we had no way to tell them apart (the strains look the same to whatever scale of study is available), which we can now tell apart. - How many diseases do we discover as we apply modern medical technology to an ever-wider portion of the global human population (again, that are already in humans but which are "discovered" in that year)? - How many new diseases develop for humans every year? For example, we have no evidence that any of the current strains of Covid-19 were present in humans prior to late 2019.
- Fomite 6y agoDefine "Discovered". Transmitting in humans? Or transmitting in wildlife? Because for the second, the answer is a tremendous number.
- sedachv 6y ago"the disease is not genetic and could be contracted from water, food or air." New Brunswick is basically a lumber colony for the Irving companies (also, so is Northern Maine, see sprainedankels' comment elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506784). On average 1% of the forest cover of New Brunswick (at least 85% of the province is forest cover) is clear-cut every year, and then the clear cut is drenched in herbicides from the air. The current herbicide is glyphosate, which has been linked to neurological disorders, but aerial spraying of herbicides in other forms dates back to the 1950s. Here is a linkdump for more information: http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/ http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/ http://isourforestreallyours.com/Isourforestreallyours/Start_here.html http://isourforestreallyours.com/Isourforestreallyours/Start... https://web.archive.org/web/20160322213243/http://dearbriangallant.ca/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160322213243/http://dearbriang... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forests-and-floods-clear-cutting-new-brunswick-floods-1.4703225 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forests-and-flo... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/louis-lapierre-stripped-of-order-of-canada-1.2675141 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/louis-lapierre-... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forestry-deal-remarkable-in-its-audacity-says-coon-1.2621573 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forestry-deal-r... This even comes up in the comments section on satire websites: "Back around 1973 or 1974, I knew of a photographer who had a summer contract with Irving, documenting the effect of spraying. He photographed deformities, poisoned animals, etc. The company was very secretive and made sure that every single roll of film was handed back to them." https://themanatee.net/firing-of-dr-cleary-proves-once-for-all-that-province-irvings-little-bitch/ https://themanatee.net/firing-of-dr-cleary-proves-once-for-a... https://themanatee.net/new-brunswicks-10-most-beautiful-clear-cuts-ranked/ https://themanatee.net/new-brunswicks-10-most-beautiful-clea...
- sprainedankles 6y agoInteresting. Will take a look at the links, thanks for the info!
- sschueller 6y agoThe people responsible for the damage causes by the herbicides will be long gone and their decedent's wealth safe before anyone will ever get held responsible. Chevron (Texaco) killed and poisoned hundreds and when they finally lost in court they went after the laywer which is currently still under illegal house arrest in NY. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5RZLyLCTo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5RZLyLCTo0
- sschueller 6y agoIt's mad cow and I don't believe that the US has had only 6 cases of mad cow with the insane way cattle get treated. They just call them "downers" and terminate them and some most likely end up in the food supply.
- toss1 6y agoYou may be right about the US Mad Cow disease outbreak, but they specifically eliminated that possibility here (middle of the article): The head of a research group on the subject, neurologist Alier Marrero of Moncton's Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, said in an interview: These are patients who have clinical features that correspond to prion diseases, of which Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is one, but show no evidence of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or any other form of prion disease.
- m00x 6y agoIt says in the article that it's not CJD, but it's possibly a new prion-based disease.
- nlh 6y agoI always find articles like this eerie, because it might be nothing...or the start of a major worldwide disease. The earliest articles about HIV/AIDS[1] and COVID-19[2] both had similar tones to them ("unknown", "similar to", "possibly a new disease", etc.) [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/03/us/rare-cancer-seen-in-41-homosexuals.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/03/us/rare-cancer-seen-in-41... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/asia/china-SARS-pneumonialike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/world/asia/china-SARS-pne...
- seattle_spring 6y agoHoly shit it was chilling to read those articles, knowing full well what they represented.
- meibo 6y ago“It would be a nightmare for all of us.” I bet that doctor would call that an understatement when asked now, or even 2 months later.
- DistressedDrone 6y ago> SARS originated in China and killed more than 800 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003 Only 800, yet it felt like such a big deal back then...
- peeters 6y agoThe mortality rate is what terrified people about SARS. It was a big deal. 50% for people 65 and older. 15% in the general population. This incidentally made it far less reproductive.
- samatman 6y ago> This incidentally made it far less reproductive. Unfortunately not. SARS-1 reproduced slowly (long onset), wasn't all that contagious, and was quite deadly. These are independent variables. Smallpox had a high R0 and was quite deadly.
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- betwixthewires 6y agoI was hoping not to see CJD or prions mentioned in this article. I wonder if these tests for prion diseases included chronic wasting disease that occurs in deer populations. Is there a lot of deer hunting in New Brunswick? If this is a prion disease and it is caused by the same prion as chronic wasting disease, a lot of people are going to die in north america.