Posted on 01/29/2016 5:54:38 PM PST by LibWhacker
The disease is not normally infectious, but people who received grafts from cadavers did show telltale markers in their brains
For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer's disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments--although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.
The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater--the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.
But in addition to the damage caused by the prions, five of the brains displayed some of the pathological signs that are associated with Alzheimer's disease, researchers from Switzerland and Austria report. Plaques formed from amyloid-β protein were discovered in the grey matter and blood vessels. The individuals, aged between 28 and 63, were unusually young to have developed such plaques. A set of 21 controls, who had not had surgical grafts of dura mater but died of sporadic CJD at similar ages, did not have this amyloid signature.
Transplant trouble
According to the authors, it is possible that the transplanted dura mater was contaminated with small 'seeds' of amyloid-β protein--which some scientists think could be a trigger for Alzheimer's--along with the prion protein that gave the recipients CJD.
Both diseases have long incubation periods. But whereas CJD progresses quickly once initiated, age-related Alzheimer's develops slowly. None of the individuals had displayed obvious Alzheimer's symptoms before their deaths.
The results follow a study published in Nature last September in which scientists from University College London reported that four of eight relatively young people, all of whom died of CJD decades after receiving contaminated batches of growth hormone prepared from cadavers, also displayed amyloid plaques in the blood vessels and grey matter of their brains.
"Our results are all consistent," says neurologist John Collinge, a co-author on the Nature paper. "The fact that the new study shows the same pathology emerging after a completely different procedure increases our concern."
Not infectious
Neither study implies that Alzheimer's disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.
But the scientists say that if the theory of amyloid seeding turns out to be true, it would have important clinical implications. In general surgery, for example, any amyloid-β proteins, which are very sticky, would not be routinely removed from surgical instruments; standard sterilization procedures cannot shift them.
"It is our job as doctors to see in advance what might become a problem in the clinic," says neuropathologist Herbert Budka of the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, who is a co-author of the latest paper.
"Nothing is proven yet," cautions Pierluigi Nicotera, head of the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn. He points out that amyloid-β has not been identified in the preparations that were transplanted in either the growth hormone or dura mater studies. Nor can researchers rule out the possibility that the underlying condition that led to the need for neurosurgery could have contributed to the observed amyloid pathology, as the authors of the latest paper note.
"We need more systematic studies in model organisms to work out if the seeding hypothesis of Alzheimer's is correct," Nicotera says.
If you have surgery with anything other than new instruments you will get Alzheimer's?
Sort of sounds like it, doesn’t it? Or they’ll have to come up with a different sterilization routine if it turns out in fact to be transmissible.
They used a crappy description there. Sterilization procedures dont reach high enough temperatures to degrade amyloid proteins, if they don’t wash off they still work. If the instruments were heated to 400 or 500 degrees it would do the trick but then there is probably a lot of instrumentation that can’t take that.
It would be interesting to see a graph of elective and necessary surgery versus incidence of Alzheimer’s over the last 40 or 50 years. If the incidence of it in India rises (nearly non existent there) over time that would be telling too...
“If you have surgery with anything other than new instruments you will get Alzheimer’s?”
ONLY IF THE PERSON THEY OPERATED ON BEFORE YOU .. ALREADY HAD ALZHEIMER’S. But, to be safe, I would demand new instruments.
So, this is not a guarantee for every surgery. Please don’t think that.
It’s enough to make one think that God wants us to PRAY for healing!!!
Very similar to Mad Cow disease.
This is alarming, because in certain dental procedures, they use or have used cadaver bone (of course, completely sterlized of all normal biological traces). But I have read that prions can survive normal sterilization.
Don’t forget scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease in deer.
GOD promised us in Isa 45:17 - “No weapon formed against you shall prosper ...”
No matter who launches the weapon; no matter how the weapon is launched; we can choose to believe it WILL NOT PROSPER.
Scrapie has been around a while. Chronic wasting in ungulates (deer type critters) likely originated in the US west from mink escaping from a farm that were fed infected offal from sheep. Not sure what set it off in the east, could be just a random appearance (it’s thought it can spontaneously arise from a shape change (simple version) in the type of protein.
I believe one of the reasons the affliction appears to be spreading around the ungulate population is a combination of large populations and the fact that decent sized areas don’t burn as frequently as in past ages.
when the average person hears “transmissible” you think you can get it from sneezing- this is implanted brain matter. I think I’m safe. geez
I’m not sure burning has any affect if sterilization of contaminated surgical instruments doesn’t kill prions. CWD didn’t originate from mink AFAIK. If you have a link to that, I’m very interested. Here’s a link to what I know about the origin.
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/cwd.htm
Wow! If up to 6% of those deer have Mad Cow Disease, I am not eating deer from anywhere near Wyoming and Colorado!
A prion is an organic molecule so burning is going to destroy it. I believe range and forest floor fire will be essential to eliminating it in wild populations.
It’s been a while since I’d spent an inordinate amount of time on TSEs, but I recalled reading that mink were a hypothesized vector, their TSE is transmissible to cattle and sheep and they have repeatedly managed to escape from farms.
Following up from your comment though it appears that the main locus of the Rockies outbreak was due to stupidity/negligence at a facility in Fort Collins that held cervids in enclosures that once held sheep with scrapie and then proceeded to “hope the problem would disappear” for years.
IMO, any agricultural fields and pens/corrals that have held diseased animals need to be burned over. F&G, BLM et al should have a blanket policy that allows for fires to be built on/over the carcasses of dead wild and domestics like sheep in the wild in remote areas to stem transmission by animals working bones and the soil around it for calcium. Areas that demonstrate multiple infected wild animals should allow natural or man caused fires to run their course subject to not destroying structures or threatening people.
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