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I had researched on prions and the Kuru disease for a class while looking at the impacts of animal testing (the Kuru disease is a prion found in New Guinea and
by user_7832 5y ago
I had researched on prions and the Kuru disease for a class while looking at the impacts of animal testing (the Kuru disease is a prion found in New Guinea and is considered to be the first prion disease). Prions are scarily dangerous - near-fatal if exposed to it, and stable at much higher temperatures that regular non-misfolded proteins.
However, your chances of getting prions is very low. As long as you avoid "exotic" meat like monkey brains and stay in countries with strong regulatory bodies (like the US/EU etc) the risk of exposure is extremely limited. Bonus points if you avoid swimming in random bodies of water to not get contaminated water with brain-eating amoeba traveling up your nose.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- andybak 5y agoMy great love is travelling (mostly outside the EU/US) and this often involves countries where swimming in random bodies of water is part of the standard itinerary. I'm sure I'm not particularly unusual in this respect. Most of friends have similar preferences.
- awestroke 5y agoGood for you
- andybak 5y agoDid you respond sarkily because you thought I was bragging or something? I'm not sure I understand why I provoked this reaction from you.
- ubermonkey 5y agoDoing that sort of travel is, for most citizens of the industrialized west, pretty unusual.
- Aeolun 5y agoJumping into random bodies of water in the industrialized west is not unusual at all however.
- jcims 5y agoYeah my girls loved swimming in my in-laws pond behind their house. This ruined that. Statistically almost zero chance it will happen, but the ghost of the idea is there. Especially when you see micrographs of the little demon: https://www.newsweek.com/brain-eating-amoebae-strike-again-time-minnesota-351958 https://www.newsweek.com/brain-eating-amoebae-strike-again-t...
- lukas099 5y agoI guess I should count myself lucky for the 'dangerous' things I got to do as a kid; it seems to be a thing of the past.
- jcims 5y agoMaybe I overstated, they still swam, just a bit more freaked out.
- rootusrootus 5y agoIf you wanted to define 'survivorship bias' with a simple example, this would do it.
- MathCodeLove 5y agoThis really is a poor example. The vast majority of children who grew up doing "dangerous" activities are still alive and well. Survivorship bias is more often used when the chance of surviving is statistically lower than most people realize.
- emteycz 5y ago
- amackera 5y agoThen you are exposing yourself to a potential prion transmission vector, though it's probably an incredibly low risk.
- pixl97 5y agoAlso, our chance of getting prions is low, because if it wasn't, we'd be extinct.
- oxymoran 5y agoTrue. But they don’t go away, they persist in nature. So theoretically, the risk continues to grow as they accumulate over time.
- mr-ron 5y agoTheres also "Fatal insomnia" which is a prion disease that is hereditary. https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/brain,-spinal-cord,-and-nerve-disorders/prion-diseases/fatal-insomnia https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/brain,-spinal-cord,-and-ne...
- pcurve 5y agoWow... Only 40 people in the world have it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zaz67IcLDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zaz67IcLDY So scary.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoNonsense, it is not like they are forever chemicals. They break down over time so it isn't like the global prion count keeps going up
- google234123 5y agoI would guess they still deteriorate over years so the risk might actually remain stable.
- quantSystematic 5y agoYeah they really are scary dangerous. The risk of exposure is low. There are some other important transmission channels to consider. As you noted on their temperature stability, prions aren't sterilized by normal medical sterilization procedures including autoclaving. So transmission of prions by surgical instruments can occur and is well documented. The conventional advice is that surgical instruments contaminated with prions need to be thrown out. It can also occur with organ transplants. Advice: don't read about this if you're scheduled for surgery. It's probably the smallest risk you'll encounter but it might really capture your imagination. As noted in the article, prions are also responsible for 'mad cow disease', Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) as well as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. If you really want to get into prions you can start with the wikipedia entries for those. They're pretty incredible from a physics / biology standpoint. The thing the article doesn't point out that is important to keep in mind is that CJD is a really awful neurological wasting disease and it's likely that in those seven years Émilie Jaumain and her family suffered terribly.
- walnutclosefarm 5y ago"prions are also responsible for 'mad cow disease', Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) as well as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease" ... and scrapie in sheep, and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and other wild Cervidae in North America. The latter is increasingly common in the US, although its wide spread is recent enough that little is known as to whether it is being transmitted back to humans through hunting and processing of deer.
- Pigalowda 5y agoPrion disease incidence is very low but most all cases in the US are the sporadic kind. It looks like there were over 500 deaths in the US from CJD in 2019. It’s not really about avoiding infected tissue (for CJD) https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/occurrence-transmission.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fprions%2Fcjd%2Foccurance-transmisison.html https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/occurrence-transmission.html?... Here’s some basic info and radiology https://radiopaedia.org/articles/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease?lang=us https://radiopaedia.org/articles/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease?l...
- giantg2 5y agoI wonder if it's truly sporadic or if we just don't have the necessary patient history to know the source.
- Zababa 5y ago> Bonus points if you avoid swimming in random bodies of water to not get contaminated water with brain-eating amoeba traveling up your nose. Also, be very careful with the water that you use in a neti pot.
- ortusdux 5y agoA few meat processing plants used compressed air to remove grey matter from animal skulls, and some did not provide adequate PPE to their workers. Several people started to show unique neurological symptoms that seemed to correlate with years of exposure to aerosolized pig brains. One person that I know of sued Hormel in 2008, and the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in 2009. I've always wondered if the case had merit and we just did not have sufficient medical knowledge/techniques at the time to investigate the source, of if someone read about prions and self-diagnosed. https://www.austindailyherald.com/2009/02/hormel-qpp-lawsuit-comes-to-an-end/ https://www.austindailyherald.com/2009/02/hormel-qpp-lawsuit...
- beeforpork 5y ago'aerosolized pig brains' Wow! Thanks for one of the most disgusting imaginations I had in a while! :-)
- sizzle 5y agoHaven’t seen a more relevant username to a comment on HN
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago> Several people started to show unique neurological symptoms that seemed to correlate with years of exposure to aerosolized pig brains I thought those were thought to be autoimmune issues from the person's body learning to treat neurons as a threat? Or is that a separate thing? (Or outright discredited?)
- aaron695 5y ago
- fmajid 5y agoGlobal warming is expanding the range of naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba, in the US.
- donkarma 5y agodoes the body not have protections against prions like heat shock protein?
- Auracle 5y agoThe hormonal medication HCG is also a potential source as it’s made from human urine. I took it for years.
- shostack 5y agoWhat are the risks of them being weaponized as biological weapons?