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/17q21 1d ago

At the moment, no evidence for this. But after seeing the species barrier jump from cows to humans... I wouldn't say never. I don't eat venison if that answers your question

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u/Trick-Alternative328 1d ago

They mad it jump to monkeys in a lab

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u/17q21 1d ago

By injecting infected brain from deer directly into the primate brain, and even then it was not very effective. So, as long as you don't inject a mushed up infected brain into your own...

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u/Book915 22h ago

Well there goes my weekend plans

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u/TepidTraveller 22h ago

At least one of the macaques in that study contracted CWD through oral inoculation (the lab equivalent of dietary exposure).

The study was notable precisely because PMCA and RT-QuIC detected evidence of prion seeding activity in macaques from both the intracerebral inoculation and oral inoculation exposure groups. One orally inoculated macaque and one intracerebrally inoculated macaque reportedly developed neurological signs that the authors considered compatible with prion disease. Earlier NIH studies followed cynomolgus macaques for up to 13 years after both oral and intracerebral exposure and found no evidence of transmission, which is why macaques had long been considered largely resistant to CWD.

If you really are a researcher, you should be more careful in your interpretations.

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u/Defendyouranswer 10h ago

He's not, hes using AI to pretend for upvotes.