Researchers said Wednesday they believe they may have found the cause of mad cow disease, while stressing the need to maintain precautionary measures to avoid a potential re-emergence of the illness.
Veterinary medicine
Dec 18, 2019
5
505
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, together with researchers at the Polish Wroclaw University of Technology, have made a discovery that may lead to the curing of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's ...
Optics & Photonics
Nov 3, 2013
5
0
His warnings have gone largely unheeded, while wild pigs continue rapidly expanding across Western Canada, with no nationally co-ordinated science-based containment strategy in place and limited provincial resources available. ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 3, 2021
2
40
Prion proteins, best known as the agents of deadly brain disorders like mad cow disease, can help yeast survive hard times and pass the advantageous traits down to their offspring, according to a new study by researchers ...
Biochemistry
Oct 3, 2016
0
245
Grass plants can bind, uptake and transport infectious prions, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The research was published online in the latest issue of Cell ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 16, 2015
4
1390
In a new study, researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified the structure of protein fibrils linked to a hereditary form of human prion disease. This insight, they say, reveals ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 12, 2022
0
142
(Phys.org) —Mad cow disease and its cousin Creutzfeld-Jakob disease cause fatal spongy changes in brain tissue. Today, we know that these diseases are caused by prions, proteins that are folded incorrectly. A team of German ...
Biochemistry
Aug 16, 2013
0
0
While the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and China and many other countries have warmly embraced genetically modified crops, Europe remains the world's big holdout.
Biotechnology
Jul 6, 2014
39
0
Alzheimer's disease results from a dysfunctional stacking of protein molecules that form long fibers inside brain cells. Similar stacking occurs in sickle-cell anemia and mad cow disease.
General Physics
Jul 14, 2017
0
427
Protein aggregation, generally associated with Alzheimer's and mad cow disease, turns out to play a significant role in cancer. In a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology, Frederic Rousseau and Joost Schymkowitz of VIB, ...
Biochemistry
Mar 29, 2011
0
1
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad-cow disease (MCD), is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease in cattle, that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 4 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of four to five years, all breeds being equally susceptible. In the United Kingdom, the country worst affected, more than 179,000 cattle have been infected and 4.4 million slaughtered during the eradication programme.
It is believed by most scientists that the disease may be transmitted to human beings who eat the brain or spinal cord of infected carcasses. In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD), and by February 2009, it had killed 164 people in Britain, and 42 elsewhere with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period. Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989.
A British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread. The origin of the disease itself remains unknown. The infectious agent is distinctive for the high temperatures at which it remains viable; this contributed to the spread of the disease in Britain, which had reduced the temperatures used during its rendering process. Another contributory factor was the feeding of infected protein supplements to very young calves.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
