What Are Prion Diseases?

Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), are neurodegenerative conditions that not only effect humans, but animals as well. Neurodegenerative have to do with damages that occur in neurons, which could even lead to neuron death. Neurons are what make up the nervous system; This includes the brain and spinal cord. Knowing this, the disease is very affective and could cause damage to the body as far as death. Prions are found in everyone’s bodies. There is a gene in our DNA in which encodes for the prion protein. Prion protein is located on the surface of our cells. A prion by itself is an infectious particle. The particle is considered infectious due to that fact that the prion protein is misfolded. When
The different types of prion diseases for animals include chronic wasting disease (CWS), scrapie, feline spongiform encephalopathy, and the most commonly known bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Chronic wasting disease is found in deer and elk. It is contagious and found in various states. Feline spongiform encephalopathy is found in cats. This disease has the same characteristics as the scrapie disease. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is also known as mad cow disease. The cause to mad cow disease is still unknown, but it is expected to be cause by abnormally folded proteins. These diseases not only have an effect on the animals, but the human population as well. Because the animals are dying from this disease, this affects
Prions cannot grow, reproduce, respond to the environment, breathe, maintain homeostasis, and they are not made of cells.
The prion disease as of right now is incurable and untreatable. Antibodies against PrP protein are known to be possible treatment for prion disease. Antibodies are proteins produced naturally in the body by the immune system. For example, if the body was infected with a virus the antibody would try to fight it off. The only conflict that could occur with the antibodies fighting off the prion disease is the blood-brain barrier. This barrier is known to be compacted tight and the antibody has a high possibility of being too large to be able to pass through.
The test of antibodies on prion disease has been tested on mice and has been shown to be effective. The only problem is, the disease in humans starts in the brain. Therefor once the human has already gotten the disease, the most treatment possible is injecting antibodies into the