IUBio

Bovine encephalopathy

Richard Burge R.Burge at bay.cc.kcl.ac.uk
Thu Apr 21 11:34:57 EST 1994


In article <1994Apr20.114751.51941 at ucl.ac.uk> spbcnsp at ucl.ac.uk (Mr Neville Steven Percy) writes:

>The programme said hamburgers were Vicky's favourite food, but no one in their 
>right mind thinks that's a substantive link.  Hamburgers are the favourite of 
>most teenagers!  Indeed, the fact that eating BSE material should have given a 
>human CJD -- which wouldn't be expected to become pathological until around 
>40-50 -- has been used to suggest that Vicky's case can't be definitely 
>attributed to to BSE at all. 

Breaking off at a tangent - just how does one explain how an ingested prion is 
infectious anyway? I can't see it getting past the stomach, so I would imagine 
it is getting into the bloodstream somehow. The reactive part of the prion 
protein is about 27kD, however - does this _really_ get past the BBB?


__________________________________________________
Richard Burge         | e-mail:
King's College London |  R.Burge at bay.cc.kcl.ac.uk
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