I recently found out about the so-called prion diseases, which are incurable and fatal diseases that affect (a euphemism, the real word is destroy) the CNS and cause a rapid deterioration of mental and physical abilities.
There are many prion diseases, the two most famous are probably the mad cow disease (non-human mammals), and the Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) (for human mammals). Both are 100% fatal, and *no one* is known to have survived longer than 2.5 years after a CJD diagnosis. That’s the kind of stuff you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
Why are these diseases so deadly? I read that it has to do with abnormal proteins but that was way over my head.
EDIT : I have another question, can prion diseases be rightly called the most dangerous diseases known to man ?
Thanks;
In: Biology
because this type of disease attacks a fundamental process for biology: protein formation and whether the host ‘s immune system is able ot pick up onthis problem or not is entirely left to chance.
the other major issue is that this is a pervasive problem: one misfolfed protrein will inevitably causes other to also misfold and once you hit a critical mass the cell is gonna die…but likely not before reproducing.
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