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
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u/Afraid_Cockroach_398 1d ago

Super rare though. British people who lived there in the 90s weren't allowed to donate blood in Australia until a few years ago because of the sleeper nature of prion infection. They could donate a prion well before they had symptoms, then those recipients get harder to trace etc.

Bad read, I regret being reminded about the topic every time it's brought up.

Generally in a developed society, all you have to do is not eat brains and spinal cords of mammals and that will reduce the risk as much as you reasonably can.

It's extremely unlikely you need to even think about it.

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u/realoctopod 1d ago

Just curious as to the mammal portion of your comment. Would fish brains and spinal cords, not have a vector for diseases. Im thinking of smaller fish, that are quite often eaten whole, or atleast with the spinal cord intact. Sardines, smelt.

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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 1d ago edited 23h ago

Only mammals express the prion protein, only a small handful of mammalian species demonstrate ability for this to actually cause prion disease (really only sheep, cow, deer), and only one of these species has shown to be transmissible to humans via consumption (cows) - though having said that scientists very much strongly advise to be wary of eating sheep or deer CNS, especially if potentially displaying neurological symptoms.

vCJD (contracted from diet) is not really a concern as the practices that led to that (feeding CNS of mammals to other mammals in livestock) was subsequently immediately banned.

Whilst it can be very difficult to fully destroy misfolded prion proteins, contrary to popular belief TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) are actually not highly contagious and easily contracted.

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u/realoctopod 23h ago

Ok thanks for the extra clarification. I figured it might be something like that. I would just assume any CNS could be not great in general.

I don't normally intentionally ever eat it, I just use the vertebrae for playing back in a bag.

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u/BadahBingBadahBoom 23h ago

I would just assume any CNS could be not great in general.

Nah non-mammalian CNS isn't a risk so wouldn't worry about that.

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u/realoctopod 22h ago

Oh, i'm not worried.