Prions that Cause Mad Cow Disease Can Be Spread Through the Air

Giant earthquakes that decimate half of the United States, epidemics of swine flu that mimic the millions of people lost during the plague epidemics of old Europe, global warming, and a huge asteroid smashing into the Earth and wiping out the population. These are all of the things that may happen to us in the future. Not to mention sunspots and solar radiation.

So lets add a brand new disaster that could befall us in the near future: mad cow disease. Mad cow disease is also called spongiform encephalopathy. It basically turns your brain into a sponge that looks like a piece of Swiss cheese. In other words, it eats holes in your brain. Not a very pleasant way to go. Fortunately, the disease is rare at this point. It has infected just 300 people around the world, but all of the cases have been fatal.

The usual mode of transmission for this disease is through food. It is believed to be cause by some farmers feeding ground up cattle in the grain that is used to feed other cows. It has also been seen in cannibals. So feeding a species to the same species doesn't seem to be a very good idea.

The disease is caused by a protein called a prion. That's why unlike other food-borne illness, you can't kill it by cooking like the bacteria that cause food poisoning.

There were a few cases of Mad Cow Disease in the United States a few years ago and that caused quite a panic. There were more cases in Europe and great Britain and that caused them to outlaw certain cuts of meat that may have spinal tissue in them. Spinal and brain tissue is where they found most of the prions. But now a new report shows that Mad Cow Disease may be transmitted through the air.

According to Medical News Today:

"Prions, the agents that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, can spread through the air and induce infection, according to new research led by the University of Zurich."

Up until this point, scientists didn't believe that prions could be spread through the air like a virus. They knew that Mad Cow Disease could be caught by eating the brain tissue of a cow that was contaminated and could be spread through blood transfusions, but not through the air.

The researchers obtained the results by placing mice in special inhalation chambers and then giving them the prions through the air. A hundred percent of the mice that were exposed for just one minute caught the disease.

The scientists suggest that laboratories and feed plants take these new findings to heart and implement procedures to stop transmission of the disease through the air. There is no evidence that a person that is infected with the prions exhale them. At least that's good news.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/213819.php