Like CJD, why haven’t we developed treatments so the disease isn’t a death sentence?
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Proteins are like beads on a ball of string. They’re all tangled up, but their specific shape allows them to do what they need to do. If they’re out of shape even a tiny bit they don’t work and usually get broken down for their parts to build another protein.
Prions are proteins that are very toxic to the body in the way they’re shaped. However they also have the ability to take your normal protein with the same sequence of beads (amino acids) as it and when they bump into each other turn the normal one into the toxic shape. Even if your body is destroying the prions, which sometimes they struggle with, this bumping into the normal protein to make a new prion protein means it usually outpaces your body’s ability to deal with it
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