Infectious Protein Spreads Through Bodily Fluids, Tissue

Once again, people are asking whether Alzheimer’s disease is a transmissible disease. Fortunately, wishful thinking has been pushed aside by science.

First of all, there is a growing stack of evidence that suggests that Alzheimer’s is a transmissible disease.

Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and Huntington’s disease also are transmissible. All are more accurately defined as prion (PREE-on) disease. The clinical term for prion disease is transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The world of medicine prefers to avoid this term because it raises many questions about transmissibility.

Secondly, there is no credible, scientific research that proves that Alzheimer’s disease is not a transmissible disease. Deniers of science are betting their lives and others on wishful thinking.

Prion Disease

TSEs are not limited to humans. When livestock contract prion disease, it is called mad cow disease. When wildlife contract prion disease, it is called chronic wasting disease. Among humans, the only differences between these forms of prion disease is the region of the brain that is being attacked by prions. If the presenting symptom is memory, the diagnosis is Alzheimer’s disease. If the presenting symptom is a movement disorder, the diagnosis is Parkinson’s disease and so on. No two cases are the same in terms of pathology because prions mutate as they move up the food chain. There are now millions of prion mutations circulating and they don’t know species barriers. Livestock and wildlife are exposed to prions from humans because we dump infectious waste on farms, ranches and forests. People are exposed to prions from livestock and wildlife because of many vectors.

Prions are a deadly and unstoppable form of protein that migrates, mutates, multiplies and kills with unparalleled efficiency. Prions were first discovered in the late 1980s as a protein-containing biological agent that replicates itself in living cells without nucleic acid. Prions are not alive, which means that they can’t be killed. Neutralizing them is virtually impossible. With each mutation, they become deadlier and more resistant.

Prions cause fatal neurodegenerative disease in humans and other mammals by converting the cellular version of prion protein into a toxic form that erodes the brain and body. Prion disease often is described as a wasting disease that causes a loss of body mass and brain mass.

Disease Transmission

As mentioned above, TSEs are transmissible. Most hospitals, neurologists, surgeons, coroners and even morticians are aware of the prion threat. Unfortunately, family members and caregivers are not being warned.

Victims should be quarantined because prions are in the milk, urine, feces, blood, saliva, mucus, skin and cell tissue of all victims–all human byproducts that are washed, dumped, or flushed down sinks and toilets. One can assume that the waste is extra infectious when it comes from funeral homes, nursing homes, hospitals, dental offices, veterinarians, slaughterhouses and some laboratories.

“There is now real evidence of the potential transmissibility of Alzheimer’s,” says Thomas Wiesniewski M.D. a prion and Alzheimer’s researcher at New York University School of Medicine. “In fact, this ability to transmit an abnormal conformation is probably a universal property of amyloid-forming proteins.”

Since deadly prions spread through the bodily fluids and tissue of those carrying prion disease (milk, blood, saliva, mucus, urine, feces, tissue and skin), that’s a problem. Prions shed from infected humans are highly transmissible.

Prion disease has killed millions of people around the world over the past century. Prion contamination is impacting more people and more families than ever today. It’s also killing livestock, wildlife and sea mammals. The connection is undeniable. Wastewater management, industrial agriculture and modern medicine are spreading these neurotoxins far and wide.

Despite millions of deaths every year, experts suggest that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease alone will quadruple by 2050, if not sooner. In the United States, for example, deaths from Alzheimer’s disease increased 146 percent from 2000 to 2018, while deaths from heart disease decreased 14 percent. Given the vast numbers of people with Alzheimer’s disease who go undiagnosed, the real number is probably double the official statistics. At $355 billion a year, Alzheimer’s disease is already the most expensive disease in the United States. The problem could bankrupt many nations.

Alzheimer’s disease is surging at a rate of at least 15 percent per year in many countries–the largest increase of all major causes of death. It accounted for 121,499 documented deaths (and thousands more of undiagnosed and undocumented ones) in the U.S. alone in 2019. A similar pattern is emerging around the globe–in some regions much more than others. In the U.S., nearly one in every five Medicare dollars is spent on people with Alzheimer’s or another dementia. These costs will rise as baby boomers age and the prion contagion spreads, soaring to more than $1 trillion in 2050.

Unfortunately, neurologists have withheld millions of diagnoses from patients and their families. Without such suppression, the public costs outlined above would have been much higher. By suppressing diagnoses, the burden of care is being placed firmly on families instead of insurance companies. According to an investigative report by the Alzheimer’s Association, physicians in the U.S. only inform 45 percent of patients about their Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. In addition to ethical concerns, such suppression helps shade the silent pandemic. Meanwhile, millions more go undiagnosed and misdiagnosed every year.

A groundbreaking study suggested that Alzheimer’s disease actually causes six times more deaths than official statistics indicate. In reality, the study said that Alzheimer’s disease was the underlying cause in more than 500,000 deaths in 2010. Unfortunately, Alzheimer’s deaths are often attributed to conditions, such as pneumonia. It appears that more accurate numbers make Alzheimer’s disease the third-leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer. Researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago led the study and published their results in 2013 in the medical journal Neurology.

Dr. Stanley Prusiner, an American neuroscientist from the University of California at San Francisco, earned a Nobel Prize in 1997 for discovering and characterizing deadly prions and prion disease.

President Obama awarded Prusiner the National Medal of Science in 2010 to recognize the importance of his research. In June 2012, Prusiner confirmed that Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and even ALS are prion diseases.

“This shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that amyloid beta and tau are both prions, and that Alzheimer’s disease is a double-prion disorder in which these two rogue proteins together destroy the brain,” said Stanley Prusiner, MD, the study’s senior author and director of the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, part of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “The fact that prion levels also appear linked to patient longevity should change how we think about the way forward for developing treatments for the disease. We need a sea change in Alzheimer’s disease research, and that is what this paper does. This paper might catalyze a major change in AD research.”

In 2019, Dr. Stanley Prusiner again confirmed that Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are forms of prion disease.

“Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease in humans and will pose a considerable challenge to healthcare systems in the coming years,” Prusiner said. “Aggregation of the β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide within the brain is thought to be an initiating event in AD pathogenesis. Many recent studies in transgenic mice have provided evidence that Aβ aggregates become self-propagating (infectious) during disease, leading to a cascade of protein aggregation in the brain, which may underlie the progressive nature of AD. The ability to self-propagate and the existence of distinct strains reveals that Aβ aggregates exhibit many properties like prions (proteinaceous infectious particle). The evidence that Aβ can become a prion during disease, Aβ prions may be important for understanding the pathobiology of AD.”

A study published in the journal Nature adds to the evidence about the transmissibility of Alzheimer’s disease between people. A second study by the same scientist in early 2016 supports the claim.

Prion disease is a spectrum disease, where Alzheimer’s disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) are on the same spectrum. The primary difference between these two forms of prion disease is that they attack the same region of the brain at different speeds. CJD is highly infectious and clearly mismanaged. The same can be said of Alzheimer’s disease.

Claudio Soto, PhD, professor of neurology at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, and his colleagues confirmed the presence of prions in urine. Prions infect the entire body and all bodily fluids of its victims, including blood, mucus and saliva. Caregivers for anyone with neurodegenerative disease beware.

“Our findings open the possibility that some of the sporadic Alzheimer’s disease cases may arise from an infectious process, which occurs with other neurological diseases such as mad cow disease and its human form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,” said Soto. “The underlying mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease is very similar to the prion diseases. It involves a normal protein that becomes misshapen and is able to spread by transforming good proteins to bad ones. The bad proteins accumulate in the brain, forming plaque deposits (and inflammation), which kill neurons.”

As the prion disease pandemic explodes, municipal wastewater treatment systems are becoming weapons of mass destruction. They are collection points and distributors for prions in blood, saliva, mucus, urine, feces, tissue and skin. Since we now dump most of our sewage sludge on crops, ranches, parks, playgrounds, golf courses and gardens, prions are contaminating our food and water supplies more and more every day.

Prion disease is a threat to families, caregivers, healthcare systems and entire communities. Government and many industries won’t talk about the transmissible nature of prion disease, but you won’t see many neurologists touching their patients anymore. Diagnoses are made quickly from across the room. When someone has CJD, hospitals won’t admit them due to prion risks.

The implications represent an environmental disaster and a public health disaster. There is no cure for prion disease. It is always fatal. Victims spread deadly prions with a touch, a sneeze or cough. Prions are Once a cup or a spoon, for example, has been exposed to prions, those items are permanently contaminated. Prion aversion is the only way to prevent these forms of neurodegenerative disease.

According to research from Duke University, caregivers of someone with dementia are six times more likely to develop the condition themselves.

According to neuroscientist Dr. Laura Manuelidis, at least 25 percent of Alzheimer’s diagnoses are actually Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is further up the prion spectrum. CJD, without dispute, is extremely infectious. The primary difference between the two is severity of symptoms.

CJD, without dispute, is extremely infectious to caregivers and loved ones. Hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses are defending themselves from transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, but family members and caregivers are not being warned about TSEs. In fact, the CJD Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Association are spreading misinformation about the threat. Millions of patients and caregivers are being misinformed, misguided and exposed to an extremely aggressive version of prion disease.

Millions of cases of deadly and infectious CJD are being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. For that reason alone, we should assume that all cases of Alzheimer’s disease are infectious. In reality, the entire spectrum from early onset Alzheimer’s disease to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is infectious.

Neurologists are just flipping a coin to make a diagnosis in many cases because there is no definitive difference other than severity. What should be a very important distinction and diagnosis is just a guess.

Meanwhile, CJD has not been declared a reportable disease across the U.S. and many other nations.

Why does it matter?

Should people with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease donate blood or organs?
Should surgeons, dentists and other healthcare professionals use equipment on people with prion disease and then on the general public? Medical and dental equipment contaminated with prions are forever contaminated. Hospitals, for example, have been successfully sued over prion contamination.
Should infectious waste be regulated and isolated?
Should infectious waste be dumped on open land within our watersheds?
Shouldn’t family, friends and caregivers be warned about the infectious environment that surrounds those who have neurodegenerative disease?
Mad cow disease is admittedly infectious to humans. Why are we discounting the risks of chronic wasting disease being transmitted to humans? There is no species barrier.

Answers begin with the truth. Defend yourself and your family with facts.