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Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

bbc.com

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Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#31

Post by rndude »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
sirsinsalot wrote: post #24

Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

Prions are incredible hard to destroy.

To quote from Wikipedia:

`Prion aggregates are stable, and this structural stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents: they cannot be destroyed by ordinary disinfection or cooking.`

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#32

Post by awd »

samirelanduk wrote: post #15
jokoon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made some news, it was suspicious cases of pneumonia in china. First time I read the article, I was like "uh oh". It did not make the headlines though, but it was still noticeable. I think I spotted it on reddit or hackernews. Maybe the article was on BBC? BBC has quite a good world coverage. I guess you can google news by year. I'm very certain those articles exist. Next time I heard about it, it was getting much…

I don't think there were any reports online until December 31st.

Funnily enough, there were some memes about it before December 17th 2019. Comparing some disease from 1920 with 2020.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#33

Post by neartheplain »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
sirsinsalot wrote: post #24

Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

Yes, prions can survive cooking. Emphasis mine:

> 134 °C (273 °F) for 18 minutes in a pressurized steam autoclave has been found to be somewhat effective in deactivating the agent of disease

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion#Sterilization

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#34

Post by StavrosK »

rndude wrote: post #31
StavrosK wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

Prions are incredible hard to destroy. To quote from Wikipedia: `Prion aggregates are stable, and this structural stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents: they cannot be destroyed by ordinary disinfection or cooking.`

Oooof...

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#35

Post by TorKlingberg »

jokoon wrote: post #4

I was scared for a bit. This reminds me that I first read about early cases of covid around october or november 2019.

Unless you have a link to the article from that time I'm going to guess that is a false memory or something unrelated.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#36

Post by regularfry »

medstrom wrote: post #27
peteretep wrote: post #21

> Several patients have presented with transient "Capgras delusion", a psychiatric disorder in which a person believes someone close to them has been replaced by an impostor. > "It's quite disturbing because, for instance, a patient would tell his wife: 'Sorry ma'am you cannot get in bed, I'm a married man' and even if the wife gives her name, he'd say: 'You're not the real one,'" Dr Marrero says. You could spice up…

As long as you induce it consensually, right? It sure would be uncomplicated, no real third party needed.

That... wouldn't work. Consent must be continually given, and for Capgras to work you can't be aware it's a delusion at the time you're experiencing it.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#37

Post by basicplus2 »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
sirsinsalot wrote: post #24

Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

Yes and they can pass on to other patients from surgical tools

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surgical-exposure...

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#38

Post by petre »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
sirsinsalot wrote: post #24

Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

Yes they do, unfortunately. And there are recently discovered cases of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in elk, deer and moose worldwide. I hope it doesn't pass to humans. For the time being I'll refrain from eating game.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#39

Post by arpa »

GordonS wrote: post #26
dmix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get plenty of excitotoxins from eating MSG which may be causing diseases too. The amount of msg in commercial food has doubled the last decade apparently. So much we don’t know about the body and what we put in it.

I hadn't heard this claim about MSG before. I did a quick search on Google, but didn't find anything that looked remotely reputable. I did a quick search on Google Scholar, and everything seemed to be refuting the claim. Do you have any sources you can share?

Yeah, the grandparent is talking out of their rear-end. MSG is well researched and relatively safe. There have been numerous studies refuting the existence of "Chinese restaurant syndrome" and/or attributing the symptoms to allergy to MSG. "Syndrome" was originally a self-reported case study and none subsequent studies with n>10 have been able to replicate the case.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#40

Post by colechristensen »

StavrosK wrote: post #28
sirsinsalot wrote: post #24

Prion diseases terrify me. Especially having been in the UK eating beef at the time of the BSE outbreaks in the 1990s. I wonder if there have been studies on the scale of potential latent vCJD/Prion disease in the population?

Did prions survive cooking? I'd have thought cooking the beef would have killed them.

If you took affected neural tissue and burned it to ash on a wood fire, there remains (although low) infective potential but probably only if you were trying in a lab. It takes 1000 C incineration to defeat infectivity and even then they’re still detectable.

Composting so the proteins are broken down biologically is also an alternative.

No amount of cooking prions that leave anything you want to eat makes infected material safe.

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