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Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#11

Post by armitron »

Invictus0 wrote: post #8
michaelcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't cataract surgery removing something, only? FWIW, both my parents had cataracts removed, and my father who'd worn eyeglasses since the 1940's said he'd never seen better in his life. So, chin up.

Yes, but the article says that the instruments used in opthalmology can be vectors for the prions. OP is fine though assuming his operation was more than a year ago and he's not currently dead.

Prion diseases have incubation periods that are very long (5 to 20 years). It is only after symptoms appear that the end is near (a year or less).

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#12

Post by Ma8ee »

Invictus0 wrote: post #8
michaelcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't cataract surgery removing something, only? FWIW, both my parents had cataracts removed, and my father who'd worn eyeglasses since the 1940's said he'd never seen better in his life. So, chin up.

Yes, but the article says that the instruments used in opthalmology can be vectors for the prions. OP is fine though assuming his operation was more than a year ago and he's not currently dead.

The year is from the onset of the first symptoms. It said nothing about incubation period.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#13

Post by erichurkman »

Invictus0 wrote: post #8
michaelcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't cataract surgery removing something, only? FWIW, both my parents had cataracts removed, and my father who'd worn eyeglasses since the 1940's said he'd never seen better in his life. So, chin up.

Yes, but the article says that the instruments used in opthalmology can be vectors for the prions. OP is fine though assuming his operation was more than a year ago and he's not currently dead.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11721058?dopt=Abstract

> we estimate that the mean duration of the incubation period is 16.7 years

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> A comprehensive statistical analysis had earlier reported that the mean incubation period was between 10.3 and 13.2 years, but the tail of the distribution was long. Using these estimates, we calculated that the upper 0.4% quantile was 40 years, and even larger for those infected young (>50 years), very much in line with these new observations.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#14

Post by ryanmercer »

Prions are one of the things that makes me go, hey wait maybe we do live in a simulation. They're basically corrupted code (which we've yet to figure out how they get that way in the first place) that corrupts other code... what is that?!?! Reminds me a lot of the WoW 'corrupted blood incident'.

I understand how something like bacteria or a virus enters a host and replicates, but an anomalous protein corrupting other protein is just so strange. I'm sure science will adequately explain it someday but until then it's a pretty WTF anomaly to me.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#15

Post by arkades »

barking wrote: post #7

About 20 or so years ago I was feeling bad about my chances of developing the type of CJD associated with mad cow disease because of all the burgers I'd eaten over the preceding years. There were also human cases getting reported at a rate that some suggested matched the pattern for the early days of an epidemic. Luckily that never materialised. Still though having lived in the UK during a certain time period preclud…

> There were also human cases getting reported at a rate that some suggested matched the pattern for the early days of an epidemic.

An epidemic is by definition a statistically significant deviation from historic baselines.

Every single upswing within the normal rates of variability - all of the sin curve living above 0 - looks like “early epidemic.” We have one every month.

That was scare-mongering, too. Everyone loves to report an incipient disaster, at least until people get numb and the ratings fall down.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#16

Post by rantanplan »

ryanmercer wrote: post #14

Prions are one of the things that makes me go, hey wait maybe we do live in a simulation. They're basically corrupted code (which we've yet to figure out how they get that way in the first place) that corrupts other code... what is that?!?! Reminds me a lot of the WoW 'corrupted blood incident'. I understand how something like bacteria or a virus enters a host and replicates, but an anomalous protein corrupting other…

We do live inside a simulation... of particles, called... the Universe.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#17

Post by arkades »

Invictus0 wrote: post #8
michaelcampbell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't cataract surgery removing something, only? FWIW, both my parents had cataracts removed, and my father who'd worn eyeglasses since the 1940's said he'd never seen better in his life. So, chin up.

Yes, but the article says that the instruments used in opthalmology can be vectors for the prions. OP is fine though assuming his operation was more than a year ago and he's not currently dead.

No, it quoted the speculation.

> them may then become contaminated, the authors write. They recommend single-use instruments or the adoption of new decontamination procedures for opthalmological equipment with better effectiveness on prions.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#18

Post by fallingknife »

arkades wrote: post #10

Prion disease is exceedingly rare. CJD is the most common, with an incidence of 1 per 1,000,000 person-years worldwide, inclusive of all transmission vectors (including medical procedures). Iatrogenic transmission is a rarer subset still: the riskiest transplants (with respect to CJD) are in the central nervous system. The UK tracked their transmission rates from 1970 to 2003 (a long period is needed because surgical…

Infectious disease is one area where fear of the unknown is rational. We don't just need to defend against existing diseases, but also diseases yet to emerge. Just because CJD is rare doesn't mean that the next prion disease will be, so it would make sense to take measures to prevent transmission of prions now.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#19

Post by AllegedAlec »

ryanmercer wrote: post #14

Prions are one of the things that makes me go, hey wait maybe we do live in a simulation. They're basically corrupted code (which we've yet to figure out how they get that way in the first place) that corrupts other code... what is that?!?! Reminds me a lot of the WoW 'corrupted blood incident'. I understand how something like bacteria or a virus enters a host and replicates, but an anomalous protein corrupting other…

It's actually relatively simple. Proteins, very roughly speaking, are things that change other things into something we need. You could think of proteins required for breaking down sugar, which do more or less exactly that: they take a molecule of sugar, break a part off of it and hand it to the next protein in the chain.

What makes prions so weird is that they are a protein that has been mismade (misfolded, generally). That something is being made broken isn't that weird in biology. Mostly, the body degrades them pretty quickly. However, prions, while not being able to do what they're meant to do, can take well-made versions of itself and break them in the same manner.

Re: Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

#20

Post by mrob »

ryanmercer wrote: post #14

Prions are one of the things that makes me go, hey wait maybe we do live in a simulation. They're basically corrupted code (which we've yet to figure out how they get that way in the first place) that corrupts other code... what is that?!?! Reminds me a lot of the WoW 'corrupted blood incident'. I understand how something like bacteria or a virus enters a host and replicates, but an anomalous protein corrupting other…

At the molecular scale, everything is effectively made of springs (molecular and intermolecular bonds). Proteins are a big complicated tangle of springs, and that means they have multiple possible configurations they can spring to if you let them relax. If you bump another protein of the right shape against them, you can nudge them into a different spring configuration.

Think of "slap bracelets", those curved metal strips that spring around your wrist. If you push two straight ones together, nothing happens. But if you push a curled one against a straight one it will make the straight one curl up too. The curled slap bracelet is acting like a prion.

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