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New Test Spots Human Form of Mad Cow Disease With 100-Percent Accuracy (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Scientific American: Eating beef from an animal infected with mad cow disease can lead to an untreatable condition that attacks the brain and is universally fatal, but symptoms can take decades to emerge. Thankfully, Claudio Soto, a neurologist at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, and her team, as well as a team led by Daisy Bougard of the French Blood Establishment in Montpellier, France, have developed new blood-screening technology that can spot Mad Cow Disease (known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) with 100 percent accuracy -- perhaps years before it attacks. From the Scientific American: "Misfolded proteins called prions cause both mad cow and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Once they invade the brain, they begin recruiting normal proteins and forcing them to adopt the same abnormal shape. The prions and the blighted proteins clump together forming increasingly large aggregate deposits that wreak havoc on the brain and invariably lead to death. The disease, however, has a long incubation period. In the interim, the prions hang out in non-brain tissues such as the appendix and tonsils, and because they do not cause symptoms, the infected person becomes a silent carrier. [The two teams] ran the test on blood samples from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease patients in the U.K. and France. The two teams used slightly different methods, but the basic idea was the same: the test essentially mimics the progression of the disease in an accelerated, artificial environment. First the prion proteins are separated from the blood and combined with normal proteins, which take on an abnormal shape, forming aggregate clumps. Then, the aggregates are pulled apart and recombined with more normal proteins. The process is repeated over and over again, in effect replicating the prion proteins until very small quantities are amplified enough to be easily detected. If there are no prions present in the blood, nothing happens. Between the two studies, the test was able to identify a total of 32 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease with 100% percent accuracy, and there were no false positives among the 391 controls, which included regular blood donors, patients with a different form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and patients with other neurological diseases. In addition, Bougard's group was able to diagnose variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the blood of two patients 1.3 and 2.6 years before they developed clinical symptoms." The two studies -- "Detection of prions in blood from patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" and "Detection of prions in the plasma of presymptomatic and symptomatic patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease" -- were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Two cows begin talking about mad cow epidemic.
One says to the other how afraid he is of contracting the disease.
The other seems unconcerned.
The first cow becomes agitated at the indifference his friend is showing towards a threat which is affecting the whole cow community.
The second cow replies "I can understand why you are so upset, but why should I be concerned? I'm a helicopter".
Please consider a lifestyle not of eating animal but of compassion.
Most ppl. here are probably posting from a place that has three/four or five supermarkets within a 5 mile range of their residence.
That supermarket has aisles full of cruelty-free and healthy alternative foods that you can buy.
What is your excuse for eating meat, ***three*** times a day, at ***every** meal?
Please meditate on this question. If you live in the developed Western word, what is your excuse for consuming animals when all sort or cruelty-free alternatives exist?
I don't think you have any. That's just my AC opinion.
Denny Crane: Let me tell you something. When you got polar ice caps melting and breaking off into big chunks and you got Osama still hiding in a cave, planning his next attack, when you got other rogue nations with nuclear arsenals, and not to mention some wack-job, home-grown that can cancel you at any second and when you got...mad cow, now gets high priority. And when you're still on the balcony on a clear night, sipping scotch with your best friend, now is everything.
Alan Shore: Here's to that.
Denny Crane: Here's to now.
The mad-cow disease before it mutates into "mad person disease" and then into "mad zombie disease".
"all these beef eaters" makes it sound like there's a lot. There's been about 200 cases ever since the disease emerged. A big fuss was made at the time and America banned British beef forcing beef eaters over there to do some their own growth-hormone treated tasteless beef.
Prions & protein folding diseases are no laughing matter.
In all seriousness, for anyone interested in a possible prevention or cure, you might enjoy reading The Storied Man, about Paul Alan Cox, an ethnobotanist who has been chasing protein folding diseases around the world.
I also highly recommend flying on Southwest Airlines.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
lol. Remember that time traveler_0 from the 90's?
You knew the low-hanging fruit had to be harvested, eh? Like all those sour celebrities that Trump didn't even want to show up at his little ceremony next month...
On the actual article, the process sounds quite a bit like the way they replicate DNA for analysis, but I don't understand the disease mechanism well enough to understand if that's really a good description of what they are doing. The notion of any diagnostic test that is completely reliable but which isn't working at the DNA level seems hard for me to buy into...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I have a feeling that many cannot remember the "mad cow crisis" in the 90s. Because after the crises var-CJD/MCD has not gotten much attention lately.
Background: .. like brain, eyes, bone, spinal matter, ..) which was then restricted.
The interesting thing was, that there was some evidence that MCD was being transmitted onto cows by feeding them carcass meal (pulverized dead leftovers from slaugther - everything not sold
There were secondary hints, that the initial prion mutation could be the effect of a chemical agent used some years before in agriculture.
Note: those prions could really multiply every generation through this kind of "recycling".
However that crises took shape in england where it was observed that a higher than usual incident rate of CJD in humans occured and a conclusion was finally drawn between MCD and vCJD. Hint: "piri piri"
Which finally lead to carcas meal ban in Summer 1996.
The UK was at the center of the outbreak with very high incident rates. Public was kept in the dark for some time.
Stastics:
Now the interesting fact is in [1] which tells us, that there was a peak in 1992 contrary to the ban of 1996 I cannot explain that drop, it could be that using brain and spine for carcas meal production was forbidden.
For a long time there was an import ban on bovine meat from UK in the EU.
Interstingly there was a test developed for live cattle[2],
which is not being used.
The "walking dead" moment:
Now the interesting point is that MCD-crisis is not really over, and this testing method explains that we might be infected by prions from cows with MCD, and even if a cow is not diagnosed with MCD - only cows older than 24 months are tested. A normal cow could carry those prions and we ingest those prions. However those cows never get diagnosed because not reaching the age where they'd show symptoms.
And yes the sad moment is "some might be infected"
the question who is infected?
Sometimes it is only good to know for others (blood donation recipients) but not for you ?!
Another conclusion can be drawn, that when having still cows with MCD it is likely that even now people get infected by MCD-prions, as of now.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/w/ind...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem with prions is that they need to multiply over time.
Having a very early onset means you'd likely had ingested huge amounts of prion contaminated beef. But even if you have ingested some amount you might get hit later on, this is what they meant with "decades".
So his conclusion is correct.
Because he reduces the prion ingestion - there are still cows getting diagnosed, but the diagnoses is only done on older cows and on cows that show symptoms!
And because the symptoms show up lately the unsymptomatic cows might have also infected you before.
The University of Edinburgh has a vCJD monitoring unit which records the instances of the disease in the UK. See their latest report. When reading it, it is important to note that it covers all types of CJD, but only the vCJD info is relevant to the mad cow issue (other types of CJD have, for example, genetic causes).
The key take home facts are that (a) the total number of deaths so far in the UK since the disease emerged in 1995 is 178 (128 definite and the rest probable). 28 people died of the disease in 2000 and it has been in decline since then. In the last five years only TWO people have died of it, one in 2013 and one this year. There are ZERO current suspected living cases.
It is of course possible that there could be a second wave of deaths since risk is known to be linked to genetic markers and their could be another genetic group with a much longer incubation period. But with each year with no deaths this seems less and less likely.
As far as it is currently known it is not possible to get Mad Cow Disease from eating the meat. Apparently it's only bone marrow, joint tissue or brain tissue that might contaminate you. The Mad Cow Disease was spread because non-meat remainings of cattle and sheep (with the similar disease Scrapy) were used in cattle and sheep food pellets to increase the protein content. Most interestingly though, certain Manganese compounds seem to trigger the creation of the prions that lead to Mad Cow Disease even in non-contaminated cows and sheep. So it's much more complicated than eat beaf = get Mad Cow Disease.
The president elect had been formally elected by the electoral college.
Testing him now will not change that.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
From what is known this cannot be correct.
1.) Because the test is a blood test, testing for prions present in the blood and multiplying them. Also do the prions accumulate in the tonsils and so on.
Meaning: you will ingest prions and they can/will accumulate in you.
2.) even by todays slaughtering standards, like separating the brain early out and sucking away the spinal mass. It cannot be excluded to contaminate the meat.
Because to get to the spinal mass you need to cut it open. Also is the carcass split into halves by a chainsaw,
does cut bones open to the marrow.
And many industrial slaugthering houses do not adhere fully to the standards, its a very rough business.
3.) the cases of vCJD in the UK cannot simply be explained to be only have been transmitted through brain tissue, because these people ate meat but perhaps they ate hamburger meat where you'd cannot really tell or taste if there was a brain among.
"the infected person becomes a silent carrier."
How does one go about catching a prion infestation from such a person?
I'm really bothered by this 100% accuracy claim. Based upon the study they can at best claim near 100% accuracy, or 99.9% accuracy. There isn't enough data to say its 100% accurate, there will always be some rate of error.
http://www.slate.com/content/d...
Q: "Why do they call it PMS?"
A: "Mad Cow Disease was taken."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
America banned British blood too. Red cross in the US won't touch my blood with a 39.5 foot pole.
Which really sucks because I do want to donate blood, and not just because my company gives time-off to people who donate (and we have a very stingy time off policy otherwise- and I can't take part in this).
I wonder if this test will lead to me being able to donate blood in the future.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There has never been a case of vCJD associated with US or Australian beef. If I remember right all case were associated with European beef.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I'd better hide...
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
There was a documentary made https://www.youtube.com/watch?... about a tribe that ate it's dead and got the human form of mad cows disease. From what I recall the disease is mostly concentrated near the bones. Cows got this disease because carcases were being ground up and mixed into their feed.
I do think about what I eat. Every tasty day.
I absolutely would rather die from blood loss than get sucked into this "gay lifestyle" where dying of GRID is a normal life stage. If I were to get blood, the only thing keeping me from getting GRID would be the honors system. Fuck that noise.
I'm a little confused by this, why would you have to get AIDS if you received blood? You would get it from the blood banks like everyone else, which, hopefully, is AIDS free.
Personally, I don't think you shouldt shoot yourself in the foot and not accept blood just because the system is biased against you. That's not going to change their system or right any wrong, you would just suffer a needless death.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
And they ran the test worldwide and found that 100% of cases are Paypal customer support workers. I always suspected.
Someone feel free to correct me, but when I last did statistics we didn't use "accuracy" we always used sensitivity and specificity to talk about the likelihood of false positives and false negatives in samples. They do say that there was no false positives, so the test is 100% specific based on their sample to date (though no statistical formula will actually spit out 100%...let's just ignore that for a second) They don't mention sensitivity, and that's really the question if you're talking about screening blood donors. You don't want false negatives. They say they detected 32 cases but is it known that only 32 people had the disease? If 36 had the disease and the test didn't detect it in 3, it's only 90% sensitive. TL:DR I'm not sure that the article really knows what it's saying when it talks about "accuracy."
He can finally prove that he suffered from Mad Cow.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The slaughter process explains this - if a capture-bolt gun is used (which is the majority of non-Halal western abattoirs), they basically punch a hole through the cow's skull, rupturing the brain. No doubt brain matter ends up in the bloodstream and gets carried through the body this way before the heart stops beating. The whole slaughter process is a really messy affair, there's also fecal matter everywhere - that's where a lot of the B12 in meat actually comes from (not the meat itself.) Yum.
My apologies, I'm quite short on time today, but some facts that are worth considering (and I hope someone can dig these up):
- they do very little testing for CJD in cattle in the US, if memory serves, it's like 1 in 10,000.
- same with humans, very few humans are ever actually tested postmortem, although symptoms can be difficult to determine, and are very similar to Alzheimer's disease, of which we have a lot of people diagnosed with (previously the only way to test for vCJD was with a brain biopsy, which isn't a great idea in living people, and once they're dead, they often don't check)
- when the article says it takes a long time to show, they mean a LONG time, as much as 40 years, last I read.
If these facts are true, we really have no idea what the actual situation is like, both from the position of how many cattle have it here, and how many people are actually infected. Again, sorry I can't provide links today, but this ought to point people who are sincerely concerned in the right direction.
Please consider a lifestyle not of eating animal but of compassion.
I prefer to acknowledge that I am an omnivore and be grateful that I have high quality food to eat including sources of animal protein.
That supermarket has aisles full of cruelty-free and healthy alternative foods that you can buy.
Does it really? Was your produce picked by well paid and well treated people? Furthermore I dispute your attempt to frame the argument to imply that all animal protein comes from sources that were cruel to the animals. That is demonstrably not true in a non-trivial number of cases. Furthermore you and I might have very different ideas of what constitutes cruelty.
What is your excuse for eating meat, ***three*** times a day, at ***every** meal?
I don't. I might have a piece of meat once a day under normal circumstances, often once every 2-3 days. As for an excuse, I don't need one and don't apologize for eating animal protein if the mood strikes me. I'm an omnivore and I'm ok with that. I'm grateful to the animal that gave it's life so that mine may continue. I also raise chickens and consume the eggs which provides significant percentages of my protein needs. My making a choice to not eat meat will not improve the lives of a single animal. Not one. The meat will still be produced and sold even if I don't buy it. If you are concerned about how animals are treated then you need to look at the other end of the supply chain and work to improve regulations ensuring the humane treatment of animals.
OTOH, when I go fishing, I bleed my catch prior to taking it home to prepare as food. Based on testimony from people who have almost bled to death, this is one of the best ways to die - it feels like falling asleep.
Yeah except for that rather nasty knife cut that hurts like hell. And the hook. And the oxygen hunger from being yanked out of the water. Other than that it's just peaches and rainbows.
Seriously, it's ok to fish and I have no problem with that. Just don't think I'm deluded enough to think that fishing is some sort of comfortable death for the fish. It isn't. It's approximately as nasty as being caught by any other predator. Maybe gentler than an immediate evisceration but not by much.
your actions almost always lead to animals suffering a natural death by predation,
That does not apply to domesticated livestock in most cases. You are correct but kind of talking apples and oranges.
my actions lead to them suffering the most painless death possible, my way actually results in less cruelty than yours.
Baloney. If you shop at a supermarket that is not true by definition. I don't actually have a problem with consumption of meat but pretending that the animals who were slaughtered to bring you your meal were treated kindly. Sometimes they were but often they weren't. Industrial scale meat production isn't easy to reconcile with humane treatment of animals. A sad but true fact.
But everything has consequences - both action and inaction.
Quite right. I agree with your general thesis, just not some of the parts of the argument. I think your conclusion is correct but your path to get there needs a more robust set of supporting arguments.
Or, ya know, you could be aware that we test donated blood by PCR now. The likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS via blood transfusion is vanishingly small in the US. I would go so far as to say that it approaches zero. Nothing is perfect...but PCR HIV screening of blood products is pretty damn near it. My quick literature review shows one case of transmission in 2008 since we started more advanced screening in 1999. That's pretty good screening.
And now we reach the top of the food chain; the human.
...top of the food chain; the WORM...
FTFY
--
Vegans produce more methane than omnivores do...
Vegans CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING!