A blood test for prion disease

Comfort for those who are panicking about Mad Cow disease, BSE and other well-known prion diseases - and prefer not to think about the huge variety of other diseases defined as "protein mis-folding diseases" or the fact that prions are virtually everywhere in our world, and are there to help us adapt to environmental changes.

A blood test for prion disease

A sensitive and specific blood test has been developed that could be used to limit the risk of transmission of prion disease through the blood supply (link to papers one and two).

Prion diseases, also known as spongiform encephalopathies, are uniformly fatal, chronic degenerative neurological diseases caused by misfolding of a cellular protein, PrPC. Transmissible encephalopathies may be acquired by organ transplant, receiving contaminated blood, or the ingestion of contaminated food.

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very interesting and important information. Thanks ~

Good to read your updates. Seems that Prion diseases are gaining some research in the world, they have been finding they are more and more involved in our problems. I haven't seen you around for a while Sofi.

I just read an article recently that talked about cows and deer getting their disease from different things they eat, some plants contain the active prions in them. So we do not need to eat the infected cow to get prion disease from the cow, it can come from veggies. The article was addressing the mustard family.