What causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy?
Bovine spongiform encepha- lopathy (en-CEF-A-LOP-a-thee), also called BSE or “mad cow disease,” is a disease that affects the brain of cattle and humans. Most scientists believe that it is caused by an abnormal protein in brain tissue, called a prion (PRY-on), that can cause fatal disease when eaten.
Is bovine spongiform encephalopathy caused by protein misfolding?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a prion disease of cattle that is caused by the misfolding of the cellular prion protein (PrPC) into an infectious conformation (PrPSc).
Is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy a bacteria?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) could be an autoimmune disease produced following exposure of cattle to feedstuffs containing bacteria showing molecular mimicry between bacterial components and bovine tissue.
What was the cause of mad cow disease?
Mad cow disease is a progressive, fatal neurological disorder of cattle resulting from infection by a prion. It appears to be caused by contaminated cattle feed that contains the prion agent.
What is spongiform encephalopathy?
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative brain disorders that affect both humans and animals. They have long incubation periods, progress rapidly once symptoms develop and are always fatal.
What disease is caused by a prion?
Prion diseases include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or “mad cow” disease) in cattle, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and variant CJD in humans, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, elk, moose and reindeer.
Which of the following is an infectious protein that can lead to mad cow disease quizlet?
The leading theory is that the disease is caused by infectious proteins called prions (say “PREE-ons”). In affected cows, these proteins are found in the brain, spinal cord, and small intestine.
What is a prion mad cow disease?
BSE also known as Mad Cow Disease is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that results from infection by an unusual transmissible agent called a prion. CWD is a prion disease that affects deer, elk and moose in some areas of North America, South Korea and Norway.
What causes Kuru?
Kuru is a very rare disease. It is caused by an infectious protein (prion) found in contaminated human brain tissue. Kuru is found among people from New Guinea who practiced a form of cannibalism in which they ate the brains of dead people as part of a funeral ritual.
Can mad cow disease be passed from human to human?
Can humans get mad cow disease? Humans cannot get mad cow disease, but they can get a variant of the disease if they eat food contaminated with the diseased tissue of sick cattle. Mad cow disease is the common name for a disease affecting cattle that slowly destroys the brain and spinal cord.
Is bovine spongiform encephalopathy zoonotic?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is the only animal prion disease that has been demonstrated to be zoonotic, causing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans.
How is bovine spongiform encephalopathy transmitted?
A cow gets BSE by eating feed contaminated with parts that came from another cow that was sick with BSE. The contaminated feed contains the abnormal prion, and a cow becomes infected with the abnormal prion when it eats the feed. If a cow gets BSE, it most likely ate the contaminated feed during its first year of life.