Mad Cow and AIDS

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The links between Mad Cow and AIDS have been hushed up fairly well, but not completely.

Note: Mad Cow is caused by an infectious protein called a "prion" - because prions are proteins - they are capable of infecting viruses, bacteria and other microbes, not just animals.


Here's a quick overview of some of the research:


This 1986 paper describes how "proteinaceous capsids" (prions) use viruses as vehicles of transmission...
* "Viral influences on aflatoxin formation by Aspergillus flavus." Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 24:248-252. Schmidt FR, Lemke PA, Esser K (1986)

* Dangerous liaisons between a microbe and the prion protein. J Exp Med. 2003 Jul 7;198(1):1-4. Aguzzi A, Hardt WD. PMID: 12847133

"Epidemiological observations indicate that a microbial vector is responsible for the transmission of natural prion disease in sheep and goats … ...It is proposed that many microbial proteins may be capable of replicating themselves in mammalian cells eliciting and sustaining thereby degenerative and/or autoimmune reactions subsequent to infections with microorganisms."
* Med Hypotheses. 1999 Aug;53(2):91-102. Is the pathogen of prion disease a microbial protein? Fuzi M. Budapest Institute of National Public Health and Medical Officer Service, Hungary. PMID: 10532698

The Spongifrom Encephalopathy (SE) is a lesion, described for the human beings in the Creutzfeldt Jacob disease (CJD), the Gerstmann-Straüssler-Scheinker syndrome, the fatal familial insomnia, the Kuru, and for the animals, particularly in the frame of the epidemy of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), responsible for the actual crisis of mad cow. The pathologic form of prion (mutated form) would be the causal agent of these SE (SB. Prusiner, 1981). Other authors (L. Manuelidis, 1995) have suggested that a retrovirus (not yet identified) could intervene as a causal agent.

SE lesions have been described on histological sections from the brain of a patient suffering from AIDS dementia (J. Schwenk, 1987). These lesions have been since described (J. Artigas, 1989) for 5 other HIV+ patients. However, a publication recently reported 67 cases of SE on 200 autopsies of patients dead of AIDS (AJ Martinez et coll., Path. Res. Pract. 191, 427-443, 1995).

This lesion appears not to be an epiphenomenon, but maybe a major component of AIDS.

Mad Cow Lesions in AIDS

"According to a study from France, "The cellular prion protein (PrPc) is highly conserved in mammals and expressed widely in different tissues but its physiological role remains elusive. Recently, the human PrPc was shown to possess nucleic acid binding and chaperoning properties similar to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) nucleocapsid protein, a key viral factor in virus structure and replication. These findings prompted us to determine if PrPc could influence HIV-1 replication." "
J Mol Biol. 2004 Apr 2;337(4):1035-51.
"Analysis of the interactions between HIV-1 and the cellular prion protein in a human cell line",


[S52.008] Detection of Prion Amyloid Deposits In Vivo
Category - Infections/AIDS/Prion diseases



Barring the door to HIV: The prion propagates Host-virus battle
(This article available free to registered subscribers)



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Knowing the link between Mad Cow and AIDS helps explain why the Bush administration prevented US scientists and researchers from attending the International Coference on AIDS last year.

It also gives us a hint why Bush defined Mad Cow and prions as "select agents" under anti-terrorist legislation, and blocked prion research.



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