Deaths-head Jester

About:
[The Project]
[The ApocaDocs]
[Equal Share]
The Six Scenarios:
[Species Collapse]
[Infectious Disease]
[Climate Chaos]
[Resource Depletion]
[Biology Breach]
[Recovery]
Explore:

Play:

It's weekly, funny, and free!

SEARCH

More than 5,600 stories!

A great gift
for crisis deniers!


The ApocaDocs have a Book!
Humoring the Horror of the
Converging Emergencies
94 color pages
$24.99 now $15!
Or read FREE online!




Twitter




Ping this story
in social media:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
NowPublic
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon

Posted Fri Jan 14 2011: from New Scientist:
Prion disease can spread through air http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1295010622
You catch flu by inhaling germs - now it seems you can catch prion diseases that way too. Prions are misshapen proteins that cause brain degeneration in conditions such as mad cow disease and scrapie in animals, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. They can get into you if you eat infected meat or receive infected blood, but it was thought they couldn't spread through air. Now Adriano Aguzzi of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich reports that mice exposed for 10 minutes to aerosols containing as little as 2.5 per cent brain tissue from mice with scrapie all developed the disease within months. The prions didn't need processing by the immune system first, as some other research has suggested, but entered the brain directly through nasal nerves. "We were amazed at how efficiently they spread," says Aguzzi. He warns that this doesn't mean animals or people with prion diseases actually transmit them through the air: there have been no unexplained cases of disease transmission which suggested this. But workers in mills that process potentially infected carcasses may need more respiratory protection.
[Read more stories about: health impacts]

New!:
No reader quips yet -- be the first!

Got a PaniQuip?

Your Quip (limit 140 characters, no links, just wit):

First name:

The text shown in the Web image to the right:


We reserve the right to reuse, remove, or refuse any entry.

'Doc Jim says:
Another vector just itchin' for optimization by evolution!

NEXT>
More stories:
  • Sylvia Earle Talks Gulf Oil Spill Effects In Exclusive Interview
  • Massive Outbreak of Jellyfish Could Spell Trouble for Fisheries
  • (Prion disease can spread through air)
  • Filmmaker must surrender Chevron footage: court
  • Ocean acidification: one less thing to worry about

  • Want to explore more?
    Try the PaniCloud!
    Copyright 2010 The Apocadocs.com