Prions - Proteinaceous Infectious Particles

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    "Undetectable, it incubates for years. It kills by eating holes in people's brains, so that they stagger and collapse and lose their minds. It's one hundred percent fatal."

- Richard Rhodes, Deadly Feasts

What are prions?

    Prions are infectious proteins without genetic material that come into contact with normal proteins and transform them into more infectious prions.

    They are responsible for a class of fatal, neurodegenerative diseases in humans and animals known as the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE). Prions build up slowly in the brain, causing the formation of florid plaques and vacuoles. Symptoms include psychiatric problems, unsteadiness, involuntary movements, and immobility by the time of death. A few diseases caused by prions are scrapie in sheep, BSE in cows, and Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans.

Watch a CBS News video on vCJD!

Find out about recent research on prions.