How do prions cause mad cow disease

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How do prions cause mad cow disease

• Group 5

2
Wendy Carrillo

• Intro

3
Luci Ramos-What is a prion?

• What is a prion? They are not viruses, bacteria,
  fungi, or parasites.
• A protein particle that lacks nucleic acid and is
  sometimes held to be the cause of various
  infectious diseases of the nervous system e.g.
  scrappie.

4
Maria Dominguez-

• Hello

5
Luis Rodriguez-Diff. prion diseases

• Scrapie (transmissible spongiform
  encephalopathy) sheep -farmers have reported
  cases of scrapie since the early 1700s in
  England, Scotland, and the US.
• BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) cows -
  first noticed in 1986 in England. Due to the
  similarities in the behavior of the infected
  cows, BSE was suspected to be linked to the
  common practice of feeding cattle with remnants
  of tissue from slaughtered sheep.
• TME (transmissible mink encephalopathy) mink -
  found in the US
• CWD (chronic wasting disease) deer, elk - found
  in the US
• FSE (feline spongiform encephalopathy)
  housecats!

6
Joe-What diseases do

• They affect the brain disrupting or destroying
  neurons (brain cells) in large numbers, which
  inevitably leads to death.
• Caused by prions PrP (normal/protein) infective
  agent protein called pRpSc.
• Unknown how, but, PrPSC called protein folded
  improperly into more PrPSC-which then attacks
  brain cells.

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Mariano Ferraris-How prions affect proteins
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Andrew Griffith-Symptoms of TSE

• Animal and Human ConsequencesCows infected with
  BSE lose weight, show abnormal behavior
  (skittishness), may become paralyzed and die.
  Humans afflicted with nvCJD begin with
  psychiatric problems (paranoia) or perhaps
  problems with their senses. They later develop
  problems in muscle coordination (balance,
  speech), muscle spasms, problems with their
  senses (hearing, vision) and memory loss. They
  may finally lapse into coma and die.

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Corey Wasson-Prevention

• Preventive Measures
• Public health control measures, such as enhanced
  BSE surveillance, the culling of sick animals,
  and bans of specified risk materials (SRM), have
  been instituted in countries of Europe to prevent
  potentially BSE-infected tissues from entering
  the human food chain.
• In June 2000, the European Union Commission on
  Food Safety and Animal Welfare strengthened the
  European Unions set of control measures in
  relation to BSE by adopting a decision requiring
  all member states to remove SRMs from the animal
  feed and human food chains as of October 1, 2000
  such bans had already been instituted in most
  member states.
• (1) avoiding beef and beef products altogether or
  
• (2) selecting beef or beef products, such as
  solid pieces of muscle meat (versus calf brains
  or beef products such as burgers and sausages),
  which might have a reduced opportunity for
  contamination with tissues that may harbor the
  BSE agent.
• Milk and milk products from cows are not believed
  to pose any risk for transmitting the BSE agent.

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THE END!

• For group five