Bio-Rad A Leader In Disease Management
Prion disease is the fastest-growing cause of death in the world. It is ravaging most land and sea mammals, including humans, livestock, deer, whales and dolphins. So far, there isn’t a vaccine to prevent or cure this fatal neurodegenerative disease.
Prions are misfolded proteins that can cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. These same proteins cause mad cow disease (BSE) in cattle and chronic wasting disease in deer, elk, moose and reindeer. These diseases are particularly challenging because prions are highly resistant to conventional sterilization methods and can remain infectious and deadly for years, if not forever.
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 and even ALS are prion diseases.
The clinical name for prion disease is Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE). The operative word is “transmissible.” Prion disease is a spectrum disease, where Alzheimer’s disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) are part of the same spectrum. CJD is much more aggressive, highly infectious and clearly mismanaged. The same can be said of Alzheimer’s disease since no one knows where along the spectrum the disease becomes infectious.
Humans, livestock and wildlife inflicted with prion disease have the infection throughout their bodies. Prions are in all bodily fluids and cell tissue. Blood, saliva, mucus, milk, urine and feces become prion pathways. Cell tissue, organs and the brain are infected. Everything that victims touch becomes hopelessly contaminated and impossible to sterilize. Blood supplies are at risk. Dental and surgical instruments can’t be sterilized once exposed to someone with prion disease. Organ donations are a death sentence. Hospitals will dispose of equipment contaminated by CJD patients, while sending patients home to die, where they proceed to expose family and friends, while contaminating entire communities.
It’s virtually impossible to sterilize anything exposed to a person with prion disease. Hospital systems are now on high alert after several lawsuits regarding prion exposure. Not only is it impossible to neutralize prions, they migrate, mutate and multiply everywhere they are found.
“CJD patients should be quarantined, but CJD isn’t even a reportable disease across the U.S. and most countries,” said Gary Chandler, CEO of Crossbow Communications and a leading advocate for the truth about prion disease. “Neurologists are just guessing when distinguishing between CJD and Alzheimer’s disease. Mismanagement of this entire spectrum is fueling a public health disaster.”
Wastewater treatment plants have become prion incubators and distributors as sewage sludge is being dumped on crops, ranches, parks, golf courses, gardens, school grounds and beyond. Food and water supplies around the world have been hopelessly contaminated with deadly prions. Prions are microscopic so they are easily spread by wind, rainwater and floods. It’s not surprising that neurodegenerative disease is exploding around the world in most mammals.
Why is Prion Detection So Important?
Once considered to be separate, isolated medical oddities, the scientific community began connecting the dots between the many forms of prion diseases in the mid-20th century, and finally identified the underlying prion protein in 1985. Yet even after this discovery, developing diagnostic tests and possible treatments, let alone even studying the conditions, remained challenging.
In the late 1980s, a sizable outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in European cattle and several hundred associated cases in humans demonstrated how rapidly prion disease can spread. These events spurred the medical community to prioritize research toward an efficient, mass-producible test that could be used to screen for the presence of prions in living patients, foods, and animal-based goods.
- Public Health: Prion diseases are rare but devastating, leading to severe neurological damage and ultimately death. Early detection is crucial for preventing the spread of these diseases and protecting public health.
- Food Safety: Prion contamination in food products, particularly meat, poses a significant risk. Effective detection methods are essential for ensuring food safety and preventing outbreaks.
- Research: Understanding prion biology and developing effective treatments requires reliable and sensitive detection methods for research purposes.
Bio-Rad plays a vital role in prion detection by providing a range of products and services that support research, diagnostics, and food safety:
- Antibodies: Bio-Rad offers a comprehensive portfolio of high-quality antibodies specifically designed for prion detection. These antibodies are essential for various techniques like Western blotting, immunohistochemistry, and ELISA.
- ELISA Kits: Bio-Rad provides sensitive and reliable ELISA kits for detecting prion proteins in various samples, including blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and tissue. These kits are widely used in research and diagnostic settings.
- Western Blotting Reagents: Bio-Rad offers a complete range of reagents for Western blotting, a technique used to identify and quantify prion proteins in samples.
- Immunohistochemistry Reagents: Bio-Rad provides reagents for immunohistochemistry, a technique that allows for the visualization of prion proteins in tissue samples.
- Research Tools: Bio-Rad offers a variety of research tools, including cell culture reagents, protein purification kits, and molecular biology reagents, which are essential for studying prion biology and developing new detection methods.
By providing these essential tools and reagents, Bio-Rad empowers researchers, diagnostic labs, and food safety agencies to effectively detect and monitor prions. This contributes to:
- Early Diagnosis: Enabling faster and more accurate diagnosis of prion diseases, leading to better patient care and management.
- Food Safety Assurance: Ensuring the safety of food products by detecting prion contamination and preventing outbreaks.
- Scientific Advancement: Supporting research efforts to understand prion biology and develop effective treatments for these devastating diseases.
Prion detection is crucial for public health, food safety, and scientific advancement. Bio-Rad’s commitment to providing high-quality products and services for prion detection plays a vital role in supporting these critical areas.
There are proven strategies to help avert neurodegenerative disease, including nutrition, exercise and prion aversion. There is not a cure for prion disease, but smart nutrition can ease the symptoms of Alzheimner’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and more.
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