Health
Title: Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) and prions
Information: What is Mad Cow Disease, and what are prions? This disease has been called Mad Cow Disease, which is easier to remember than Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE. It is linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD ) which is a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder in humans. The Mad Cow description comes from the infected beef that was ingested by people who ended up with a disease that destroyed brain tissue. These sites should be useful in understanding how this disease operates. Mad Cow, The Brain Eater from NOVA http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow/ BSE Information from the Centers for Disease Control National Center for Infectious Diseases http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/cjd.htm BSE from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine http://www.fda.gov/cvm/index/bse/bsetoc.html BSE Information from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci/BSE/ Prion is a term used to describe the infectious agent responsible for several neurodegenerative diseases found in mammals, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD ) in humans. For more information about prions, see: "What is a prion?" from Scientific American http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000B256E-B042-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7 National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center http://www.cjdsurveillance.com/ Check with your librarian for resources in your own library, especially current issues of magazines and newspapers, since this topic is in the news often these days. Thank you for an interesting question, Virtual Reference Desk* *This FAQ is reproduced with permission of the VRD Learning Resource Center,http://vrd.askvrd.org/index.asp .
Category: Health