Airborne Prions

Learning about Prions earlier this week provided a solid platform for further study. When multiple misfolded prions aggregate, the build up causes dangerous neural diseases in mammals, such as cows, and humans. Misfolded prions are indeed infectious and can be transmitted if the protein is eaten or pervades the blood stream by injury. Through further reading, prions are the agents that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which made headlines several years ago as findings indicated that BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease could be airborne. Senior investigator Dr Adriano Aguzzi legitimized this finding with his study, using mice in special inhalation chambers. Within those chambers, mice were exposed to aerosols containing the misfolded prions. In one minute of air exposure, all of the mice were infected with scrapie. Furthermore, the longer the mice became exposed to the infected air, the quicker the symptoms of the prion-related disease emerged. Thus, these findings indicate that previous scientific theories regarding misfolded prions as not airborne were thus subject to falsification. Such findings also bring major implications to humans, who are subject to the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a sickness caused when humans ingest food made from infected cows. Under this disease, humans suffer as their brain cells die and the brain tissue arranges into a spongy form. If prions are airborne, slaughterhouses and animal feed plants should provide stricter conditions to prevent the airborne transmission.

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