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
Have you ever seen one of those videos of popsicle’s sticks intertwined and then the guy releases one of the sticks and everything starts collapsing like a domino effect? It’s the same thing. Once one of the proteins got the wrong folding then all others starts misfolding as well. You can’t reverse it because it would need to correct all proteins in the person’s body at the same time, which is absolutely impossible with the knowledge we have to this day
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