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Prion-infected mice survive longer A new method of treatment can appreciably slow down the progress of the fatal brain disease scrapie in mice. This has been established by researchers from the Universities of Munich and Bonn together with their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Martinsried. To do this they used an effect discovered by the US researchers Craig Mello and Andrew Fire, for which they were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine. Scrapie is a variant of the cattle disease BSE and the human equivalent Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. However, it will take years for the method to be...

A leading medical journal has published a disturbing theory on the origins of mad cow disease, suggesting it may have developed because human remains from the Indian subcontinent were mixed into cattle feed in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. The authors say the practice may still be taking place elsewhere, adding it is important to discover whether other countries are importing animal byproducts contaminated with human remains that are destined for feed mills. Canada's leading expert on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies - as mad cow and its sister diseases are called - says the unsettling hypothesis may be accurate....

LONDON - A new theory proposes that mad cow disease may have come from feeding British cattle meal contaminated with human remains infected with a variation of the disease. The hypothesis, outlined this week in The Lancet medical journal, suggests the infected cattle feed came from the Indian subcontinent, where bodies sometimes are ceremonially thrown into the Ganges River. Indian experts not connected with the research pointed out weaknesses in the theory but agreed it should be investigated. The cause of the original case or cases of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is unknown, but it belongs to...

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Washington, DC, Apr. 21 (UPI) -- Scientists involved with a new study released Thursday said it provides strong proof of the controversial theory that infectious proteins called prions cause mad cow disease and similar brain disorders in humans. Some experts find the data unconvincing, however, and one researcher recently presented findings he said robustly support a different hypothesis: these diseases are caused by a bacteria. "This is really the best and final proof for the prion hypothesis," Claudio Soto, a professor of neurology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and senior author of the...

Misdiagnosed Green Beret Demoted, Nearly Court-Martialed Before Rare Illness Revealed By Lisa Falkenberg Associated Press Writer KARNACK, Texas (AP) - By the time he shipped out for the war in Iraq in January, Special Forces Sgt. James Alford was a wreck of a soldier. For five months, he had been doing odd things. He disappeared from Fort Campbell, Ky., for several days last year. He lost equipment and lied to superiors. In December, he was demoted from staff sergeant to sergeant. In the Kuwaiti desert, he came apart. The hotshot Green Beret who a year earlier ran circles around his...

Following is a synopsis of the current knowledge about scrapie and resource information. Causative agent, transmission:Scrapie is a tranmissable spongiform encephalopathy widely thought to be caused by a misfolded prion protein that accumulates in the brain. However, there are also two other theories--that the agent is a virus with unusual characteristics, or a virino, a small, noncoding regulatory nucleic acid coated with a host-derived protective protein. According to Dr. Katherine O'Rourke, a USDA research microbiologist in Pullman, Washington, "Infection is believed to be caused by ingestion of that misfolded protein (through the placenta and placental fluids) by the lamb or...