Virus Cause of Mad Cow Diease?
I’ve been meaning to comment on this article for quite some time. The LA Times is reporting that a virus may be responsible for Mad Cow disease (aka bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE).
Virus may be the cause of mad cow - Los Angeles Times:
For a long time, scientists have thought prions, misshaped proteins were the cause but according to these new results from Lead author Dr. Laura Manuelidis of Yale University, the prions occur late in the development of the disease in mice. It remains to be proven that these isolated virus particles cause the disease but work is underway to prove just that. They did stimulate the product of the prions fivefold and this did not increase the level of infection. If this does prove to be the case, it is certainly a major turn of events for Mad Cow disease. Other scientists are highly skeptical of this idea.
I personally have always had some doubts about prions being the cause but am really not an expert on the subject. A virus seems to me to be much reasonable explanation. It is curious is to why no one had seen these sorts of particles in previous research. It will be interesting to see if they can prove that these viruses actually cause the disease.
Technorati Tags: BSE, Mad Cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Related Posts:
Bookmark it with:
| 
del.icio.us
| 
Digg it
| 
Furl
| 
Simpy
| 
Spurl
| 
My Yahoo!
|
