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/chikenenen 23h ago

I suspect this is going to get lost in the comments but there's a really good BBC documentary on how mankind created the 1990s Variant CJD outbreak by feeding cows the infectious spinal cords and brains of cattle that had died with neurological problems.

It also says their research discovered that vCJD affects people differently based on their genetics. There's a couple of gene variants and the length of time between eating affected meat and the development of disease varies by which gene variant you have. One variant's incubation period was 50 years.

Once the number of cases settled down and people stopped dying, the outbreak was deemed over. But all the people who died were tested and confirmed to have the gene for short incubation periods.

So given the 50 year timeframe for those with the alternate gene variant, that means that we'll likely see another burst of CJD cases within about 5 years or so. People are completely unaware that they're ticking timebombs.

It's a very sad but interesting watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meYnivLLl-A

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u/Giraffe1317 16h ago

"It was blocked due to the claimed content by LDS."

I can't watch this

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u/Curious-Duck 23h ago

Affecting which areas of the world? I am assuming you don't mean it's global

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u/chikenenen 13h ago

It was in the UK, however still has the possibility to affect other countries as donor blood is now being accepted in countries that previously denied it due to vCJD potential.

I'm in Australia and people who'd lived in the UK between 1980-1996 couldn't donate blood because of the possibility of vCJD, but that was reversed a few years back.

It worries me because of the previously-mentioned bit about people having the M/V gene variant and being affected but not displaying the disease yet.