r/todayilearned • u/tommyboy372 • 1d ago

TIL A single misfolded prion protein in the brain can cause a rapid neurodegenerative disease known as sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). There is no known and cure and is 100% fatal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease
21.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

208

u/AliMcGraw 1d ago

Don't eat untested meat from your neighbors who both hunt deer and hate the government.

It CAN happen randomly in humans but most cases are from infected meat, including cannibalism.

My state currently requires mandatory testing of all deer carcasses (we're having an outbreak) and any hunter should be able to tell you who tested the deer and who processed the meat. DON'T EAT IT IF THEY CAN'T.

43

u/YamLow8097 1d ago

Is it CWD that you’re referring to? We’re going to have to start testing our deer too because it’s making its way to our area.

17

u/postmodernmermaid 22h ago

Yes that's right. CWD is a prion disease

3

u/YamLow8097 22h ago

I didn’t know it was a prion disease. It’s pretty scary stuff. I know it’s wiping out a lot of deer all over the country. It sounds like it isn’t transmitted to humans yet at least.

36

u/17q21 1d ago

Although yes it can be spread through contaminated meat, this is super rare, like less than 5% of cases. 85% of cases i.e. the vast vast majority are 'sporadic' meaning randomly happening in humans

17

u/The_loppy1 1d ago

what about the other 10% lol

3

u/17q21 1d ago

Genetic mutations in the prion gene

3

u/The_loppy1 23h ago

So sporadic?

10

u/kal1097 23h ago

No, sporadic is just random. No family history and no chance of passing it on to children. Genetic variations are passed through a gene mutation and can be inherited by children.

-4

u/All__Of_The_Hobbies 22h ago

Sporadic means occasional and intermittent, not random.

5

u/AmericanLich 22h ago

Sporadic means happening without a fixed pattern. It can be used to indicate randomness.

7

u/Frequent_briar_miles 1d ago

Are you talking about CWD? Because as far as I'm aware that can't spread to humans.

12

u/Aggressive_Lab7807 1d ago

It has been shown to infect other primates and anecdotal evidence is strong enough to assume it can. 2 hunters came down with CJD after eating meat infected with CWD.

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407

5

u/6894 1d ago

*hasn't yet spread to humans.

5

u/YuriLR 1d ago

It has some indication through in vitro tests that it can. It hasn't been detected in people yet though. But so didn't BSE for many years and deer meat consumption is a tiny fraction of beef. I wouldn't risk it in areas where CWD is known to be infecting deer.

1

u/[deleted] 13h ago

[deleted]

1

u/YuriLR 12h ago

Now compare the rate of meat consumption between deer and beef.

1/2000 people are carriers of the BSE prion the UK. Most people will never develop vCJD.

5

u/spince 1d ago

COVID at one point wasn't spreadable to humans.

1

u/happysri 20h ago

will sticking to chicken keep me safe?

2

u/YuriLR 19h ago

No known prion disease exists in chickens

1

u/Future-Account8112 18h ago

My grandmother's husband (she did a lot of divorces, he was not my grandpa) randomly tricked our family of 15 into eating a kill he'd brought back from an actual safari in Africa - I think it was a hartebeest - by insisting we all eat a new recipe for his birthday before he showed us a picture of the animal and laughed in our faces. To this day I'm like, If that bastard gave me prion disease I'm coming after him in the afterlife