Category: CJD / vCJD / Mad Cow Disease

Lymph nodes can be crucial for spreading low doses of infective prion agents — the pathogens responsible for conditions such as scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease — into the nervous system, according to new research published in the online open access journal BMC Veterinary Research.

The National Institutes of Health has selected University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) Assistant Professor of Neurology Pedro Fernandez-Funez to receive a five-year, $1.5 million NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni officially announced the 29 recipients of the grants, designed to foster young biomedical researchers with bold new ideas, at a symposium at NIH headquarters yesterday, Sept. 19.

In work originating from the Bavarian Research Cooperation Prions (FORPRION), which ended in 2007, a team led by the scientist Prof. Dr. Christine Leib-Mösch has been able to show that prion proteins may activate endogenous retroviruses in infected brain cells.

Scientists have discovered a new protein that may offer fresh insights into brain function in mad cow disease. “Our team has defined a second prion protein called ‘Shadoo’, that exists in addition to the well-known prion protein called ‘PrP’ ” said Professor David Westaway, director of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta.

Researchers have shown that a recently developed laboratory method to amplify prions (Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification) can be applied to variant CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease). The work was carried out by scientists at the National CJD Surveillance Unit at the University of Edinburgh, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, Neuropathogenesis Unit and CSL Behring. It is published this month in the Journal of Pathology.The team, led by Dr.

The Department of Health is today issuing the latest information about the numbers of known cases of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. This includes cases of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD) - the form of the disease thought to be linked to BSE.

Small regions within prion proteins regulate their ability to cross species barriersResearchers have known for decades that certain neurodegenerative diseases, such as mad cow disease or its human equivalent, Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease, result from a kind of infectious protein called a prion.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has confirmed the diagnosis of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a mature dairy cow from British Columbia. The animal’s carcass is under CFIA control, and no part of it entered the human food or animal feed systems.

The rogue prion proteins responsible for diseases like BSE and vCJD can destroy brain cells by blocking the protein recycling process that helps keep cells healthy.

For the first time, a new study demonstrates that certain rodents can be directly infected with CWD and therefore serve as animal models for further study of the disease. The researchers report their findings in the Journal of Virology.Chronic wasting disease (CWD), also known as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans, is a transmissible prion disease most commonly found in deer and elk.