3 ms·
The headline is wrong. The case is not for prions, but for prion-like behaviour in amyloid beta plaques. They found that this could have been a cause of transmi
by sigmoid10 3y ago
The headline is wrong. The case is not for prions, but for prion-like behaviour in amyloid beta plaques. They found that this could have been a cause of transmission in rare cases where people received hGH sourced from contaminated cadavers and 5 out of 1800 developed early onset Alzheimer's. But they also had 200+ other people develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob, which is actually known to be caused by prions. So there might be some similarity that enables transmission in a related way. Or there might just be related symptoms. Either way, it is completely irrelevant for normal people, unless you eat squirrel brains or ground up beef imported from Britain in the 90s.
- amluto 3y agoUnless I missed something, it’s weaker than that. What’s the evidence that the contaminant that transmitted Alzheimer’s was amyloid beta or even a related substance? The hGH was inadequately purified. It seems likely to have contained multiple different contaminants.
- sigmoid10 3y agoThat's why I explicitly said could in italics. Because not even that is certain.
- jeswin 3y ago> But they also had 200+ other people develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob Goodness! 200 out of 1800 subjects developing CJD is the scariest thing I saw in that study. It isn't many folds away from being an extinction level threat. Makes me worry about exponentially rising compute capability. > Either way, it is completely irrelevant for normal people, unless you eat squirrel brains or ground up beef imported from Britain in the 90s. Most cases of CJD we see are sporadic CJD. It's rare, but also the scariest struggle I've ever seen.