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Could Diabetes Spread Like Mad Cow Disease? (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit quotes Science magazine:
Prions are insidious proteins that spread like infectious agents and trigger fatal conditions such as mad cow disease. A protein implicated in diabetes, a new study suggests, shares some similarities with these villains. Researchers transmitted diabetes from one mouse to another just by injecting the animals with this protein. The results don't indicate that diabetes is contagious like a cold, but blood transfusions, or even food, may spread the disease.
The work is "very exciting" and "well-documented" for showing that the protein has some prionlike behavior, says prion biologist Witold Surewicz of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasn't connected to the research. However, he cautions against jumping to the conclusion that diabetes spreads from person to person. The study raises that possibility, he says, but "it remains to be determined."
The work is "very exciting" and "well-documented" for showing that the protein has some prionlike behavior, says prion biologist Witold Surewicz of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasn't connected to the research. However, he cautions against jumping to the conclusion that diabetes spreads from person to person. The study raises that possibility, he says, but "it remains to be determined."
That, or maybe eating too much sugar.
Seriously, people who research this kind of crap is the reason why we have so many diseases these days. Next thing we know is this thing "somehow" leaked in a fresh water source and everyone who drinks it suddenly has diabetes.
STOP MAKING STUFF THAT CAN KILL US!!! There's literally no advantage for humans from making this diabetes protein god damn.
Food may cause diabetes... WOW, that's SHOCKING!
the anti-paleo plan
No, as usual. (unless diabetes is based on a fucked up protein.
It's called the pancreatitis virus. Much like there is a hepatitis virus that can destroy the liver, there is a pancreatitis virus that can destroy the pancreas and lead to diabetes. The prionlike protein in the article though seems to be new and this is much welcome research.
I've heard similar things with people with metabolic syndrome, e.g., twins one is fat and the other isn't fat, one has metabolic syndrome and the other doesn't. Take a bit of fat from the one with metabolic syndrome and inject it in the skinny one and they start getting more abnormal fat concentration in the place where it was injected. Perhaps it's a similar issue?
If you don't agree you're a sexist, homophobic monster.
In case others wonder about the same, the article is about TYPE 2 diabetes. Just writing "diabetes" is quite pointless since type 1 and 2 are completely different. (Got type 1 myself for 26 years)
If this was remotely true, then everyone would have diabetes by the age of 60 with all the food and exposure.to this protein. My dad is 85 and is still diabetes free!
Cannibalism is an easy way for prion transfer to occur... and cannibalism was a whole lot more common in the paleolithic age. Is it really 'paleo' if you don't eat your neighbor? Or well... the people in the next town over, I guess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Good job science for writing the next article for Goop and the Food Babe.....they will just remove all hedges of knowledge and any possible explanations for this behavior and turn it into the next clean eating nonsense.
Could Diabetes Spread Like Mad Cow Disease?
It was possible that it could have done but now Slashdot has used the power of Betteridge for good - the answer is now "no" and we never have to worry about this again.
the slowest news month always has tons of could something happen articles - skip anything where the headline ends in a ?
Now no-ones going to fuck me.
It's fascinating that a misfolded protein can create all this havoc. It's surprising it doesn't happen more often, really.
Although there is an effect of vegetarian diets on diabetes (beyond BMI), I don't think it is strong enough to suggest that Type 2 diabetes is a zoonotic disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Since I was diagnosed at 21, actually. I was 6'7" (200cm) and 230 lbs (104kg) at the time. I could have stood to lose 10 pounds at the time, but otherwise I was pretty solid muscle. I didn't eat much sugar even before I was diagnosed.
I have shrunk a tiny bit in the interim. I took pancreatic stimulants (glipizide) until it stopped working due to degeneration of the pancreas. For the last 18 years it has been insulin for me.
I avoid starches, also. They don't make me feel great either.
The warped view of non-diabetics about what diabetes actually is...is not helped by the frequent obese gobblers of sweets that frequently have the disease. But I still resent being lumped in with that crowd.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Type 1, the far more severe condition where the insulin producing cells are typically destroyed, has been well established as being primarily an auto-immune problem. Dr. Faustmann's work at Mass. General Hospital has demonstrated a successful cure in lab animals, and is in its second round of human testing: the auto-immune problem is treated by small doses of the BCG vaccine, used primarily for tuberculosis worldwide, in small doses for 30 days with very tight blood sugar control. Decades, in fact 5 decades of research, provide strong evidence that Type 1 is triggered by a changing set of flu viruses. So, yes, it's conceivable that the right infection could trigger Type 1 broadly. What's not feasible is that it could be a full pandemic: Type 1 is nasty, and expensive to treat, but still only strikes about 1 in 400 people worldwide, even with the wide exposure of children to various viruses. And such viruses mutate *very* rapidly in the wild.
There are some other "Type 1" diabetics, such as those who've had a pancreas removed surgically or cystic fibrosis or XXY genes (Klinefelter's syncrome), but they're far more rare. It's confusing to class them as Type 1 diabetics, but ever since the American Diabetic Association got all sniffy about calling it "juvenile onset diabetes", the labels have gotten funky and they get mixed in with the classic juvenile onset cases.
Type 2? That's a whole different story. Sedentary lifestyle aggravates it, active lifestyle often treats it silently and effectively, much as not living near oceans used to treat shellfish allergies or living in Arizona treated hay fever. But Type 2 is tyypically a *resistance* to insulin, not a lack of production. Whether a virus could trigger that is fascinating, but again, viruses mutate fast and immune systems adapt pretty rapidly, especially with quick vaccine development. So a pandemic seems unlikely. And franly, 1 in 20 people worldwide eventually develop it *anyway*, so it's going to be tough to boost that number drastically or beyond the ability to treat. And the basic treatment is the same one for treating most American's major medical problems: get some exercise, eat less, and lose some weight.
The nano particles used in various processed foods like sugar, toothpaste, sweats, cakes, evaporating paints end up destroying the insulin producing cells, as per local research. Cant escape these day to day products.
OK, here's a huge detour - a bit of potted history of mad cow disease...
Human's don't contract "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to give the disease its full name). Rather, we contract what medicine knows as vCJD, or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the history of BSE actually concerns the way that it was introduced to the animal population and how it spread.
Western nations like the UK (where BSE was most prevalent) have followed intensive farming practices since at least the end of the Second World War, a time where national farms simply had to produce as much food as possible given the rationing that was necessary during the conflict. For beef and dairy farmers, "intensive farming" includes the act of turning livestock not just into omnivores, but cannibals. Included in the "meal" fed to cattle we can find quite high levels of ground-up bone meal which is produced from recycled bones harvested from abattoirs. Crucially, that source of bones included the spines of processed beef cattle, which of course includes the spinal column, essentially an extension of brain tissue.
A couple of years before the outbreak of BSE in the UK, the animal feeds lobby persuaded the British government that it would be safe to make a small but significant change in the way that animal feed based on these recycled bones was made. The change reduced the amount of time for which the ground-down material had to be "cooked", on the basis of the fact that doing so would reduce the amount of [gas] energy required to cook it, significantly reducing production costs and thereby "bringing down prices for the consumer".
Everything up to this point in this post can be validated from information sources widely available on the internet. What follows contains more conjecture because the facts are less widely available. The readers is invited to evaluate and form their own opinions.
This small and apparently harmless change to the preparation and recycling of bone meal [including spinal matter] for animal feed meant that not all of the brain or spinal tissue was completely cooked at the end of the process. It was therefore possible for any latent BSE infection in the brain/spine of one cow to be ground up into meal and fed to another cow. It is possible that the bacterial infection was not killed by stomach enzymes after ingestion, but was in fact able to enter the bloodstream of the subject, flow to the brain or spine and thereby infect a new subject.
It is similarly possible that the widespread nature of the feed generation practices allowed the creation of a feedback loop in which ultra-low levels of the BSE infection were returned to herds, thus allowing for a gradual but progressive increase in levels of the infection. Evidence that shows this is scarce.
When forming their own opinion as to the truth or otherwise/probability or otherwise of this account being accurate, the reader is invited to search for or recall news coverage of the UK BSE outbreak from the late 1980s. At that time, it may be remembered that outbreaks were reported that were initially isolated to single farms. This gave the impression that the issue could have been caused by geographic factors. It was far less obvious, but equally likely, that it could have been caused by the feeding practices of individual farmers.
It was theorised [but never really shown conclusively] that BSE in cattle made the leap to vCJD in humans when processed beef - i.e. ground-up beef that included bonemeal, such as that used in beefburgers - entered the human food chain without being properly cooked. If that meat had been prepared in an abattoir that did not have good controls over the break-up of bovine spinal matter, then it was possible that microscopic particles of uncooked brain/spine could enter the human food chain.
OK, end of huge detour...
Unless Diabetes can be spread by one aspect of its infection vector being successi
"Very exciting"? Bad choice of words. No, it's fucking "scary".
Table-ized A.I.
I developed Type 2 Diabetes after taking Lipitor. Thanks, Doc.
It's late, and I don't want to take the time to create an account so ðY-But do search Type 2 Diabetes & Lipitor
If you're getting health information from the news, then you are grossly misled.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... ..."
"Why are diabetics often given inadequate -- or just plain wrong -- dietary advice?
Much of the inadequate and dangerous advice stems from a belief that diabetic patients will not be sufficiently motivated to make the necessary lifestyle changes to heal their diabetes. The typical watered-down, nutritional guidelines are designed to merely manage blood glucose by balancing carbohydrate, fat and protein to keep medication needs consistant. These guidelines are not designed to promote long-term health or fix the problem. To achieve excellent health, it is not the ratio of carbohydrate, protein and fat that is important; it is the combination of micronutrient quantity, micronutrient variety, and staying within our caloric requirements to achieve and maintain an ideal weight.
Many physicians are unaware or skeptical that type 2 diabetes can be reversed with superior nutrition. Other physicians agree that weight loss and high-nutrient eating can lead to diabetes reversal, but either don't know how to motivate their patients or simply doubt that their patients would be willing to make or capable of making the necessary changes. Instead, well-meaning physicians prescribe drugs to bring dangerously high glucose levels down; they want to protect their patients against complications, but the medications cause more problems. Insulin and several oral diabetes medications promote weight gain, which makes the patient even more diabetic, increasing risk for heart disease and necessitating even larger doses of medications -- the patient is caught in a never ending cycle of more and more drugs. Patients are told that medications will take care of their blood glucose.
This reliance on medication gives patients a false sense of security and allows them to avoid personal responsibility -- exercising frequently and eating right is not a life-or-death matter when you can "just take a pill." Many patients don't realize that their health will continue to deteriorate over time, even with their somewhat more "controlled" glucose levels. Medications can't do what removing the cause of the diabetes (the standard American diet and a sedentary lifestyle) can do. I say that people with diabetes deserve to know that drugs are a poor option, because my nutritarian diet is infinitely more effective and protective which can grant them the potential to reverse their disease and live healthfully into old age.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.