Posted on 04/21/2024 7:09:58 AM PDT by mairdie
bump
Mad cow disease originated in the UK, as far as I know. It probably crossed over from sheep, assisted by the practice of feeding offal to livestock. That’s why I made that comment.
Apparently, my ggrandfather used to love scrambled eggs and brains. These days, you can’t even find brain in the stores anymore.
The most recently discovered prion disease is the wasting disease of cervids (all deer, including moose). It has not been shown to infect humans yet, but with an incubation period of decades, it may just be a matter of time before cases show up. I would certainly want any venison tested before consuming it.
Looks like the first deer to human cases have shown up further testing will confirm of its spontaneous or cross species given it’s a cluster of cases the latter is more likely it was only a matter of time before it jumped.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hunters-die-prion-brain-disease-contaminated-deer-meat-report/
The actual science behind it.
https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407
Oh, my, that is scary.
The last I read about the chronic wasting disease was that deer are rarely tested for it, even in areas where it is known to be endemic.
It seems that the article in Neurology is just an abstract and seems to be all that is published so far. Importantly, it says, “Due to the challenge of distinguishing sCJDMM1 from CWD without detailed prion protein characterization, it is not possible to definitively rule out CWD in these cases.”
I can guarantee that if this case came into a lab where I worked, I’d be right on that protein characterization. Maybe I should apply for a biochemistry job in the neurology department of UTSA (where the authors work) and get right on that characterization. I wouldn’t even have to move to work there. (I jest; I’m retired and not really eager to go back to a full time science job.) Hopefully, they are, in fact, doing the protein studies and comparing the prions isolated from the patients to prions isolated from wild deer populations.
The timing of the CBS article is amazing, since it was published the same day that I said there is no evidence so far. Thank you for sharing this.
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