Mad Cow Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Mad Cow Blog

Scientists have reversed "mad cow disease" symptoms in mice, raising hopes of similar treatments for humans.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) team managed to rid the rodents of memory and behavioural problems associated with the cattle disease BSE and its human equivalent, variant CJD.

VCJD and other "spongiform encephalopathy" diseases are associated with rogue prion proteins in the brain, which change shape and start to accumulate.

Rogue prions appear to cause serious damage to the brain, creating holes and turning it "spongy".

As the misshapen proteins convert more and more normal prions into the mutant form, the disease spreads.

The MRC scientists, led by Dr Giovanna Mallucci, halted this chain reaction of infection by genetically switching off production of normal prion protein.

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Mad cow disease and other related brain disorders may be caused by a virus and not the weird, misshapen proteins, known as prions, that scientists think are responsible, according to a study released Monday.

Researchers reported that they found virus-like particles in mouse nerve cells infected with two brain-wasting diseases similar to mad cow disease, but found no traces of the particles in uninfected cells.

Lead author Dr. Laura Manuelidis, a neuropathologist at Yale University, said the finding suggested that prions in infected brains were the result of a viral infection and not the cause of the disease.

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Researchers have found more evidence that a virus may cause mad cow disease and a related brain disorder in humans, threatening to overturn 25 years of research focusing on malformed proteins called prions.

Nerve cells infected with the human form of mad cow disease contained a virus-sized particle that doesn't appear in uninfected cells, said Laura Manuelidis, a neuropathologist at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Conn. Cells infected with scrapie, a sheep disorder related to mad cow disease, contained the same germ.

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Researchers have found more evidence that a virus may cause mad cow disease and a related brain disorder in humans, threatening to overturn 25 years of research focusing on malformed proteins called prions.

Nerve cells infected with the human form of mad cow disease contained a virus-sized particle that doesn't appear in uninfected cells, said Laura Manuelidis, a neuropathologist at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Conn. Cells infected with scrapie, a sheep disorder related to mad cow disease, contained the same germ.

The findings raise the possibility of vaccines against the diseases and challenge research showing the disorders are spread by prions, abnormal proteins that have also been detected in the brains of infected humans and animals. Few other scientists have questioned the research performed by Stanley Prusiner of the University of California at San Francisco since he won the Nobel Prize in 1997, Manuelidis said.

"If you don't look for something, you're not going to find it," she said in a telephone interview. "If everyone believes the world is flat, no one will go out and try go find the end."

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Science Daily — A single protein plays a major role in deadly prion diseases by smashing up clusters of these infectious proteins, creating the “seeds” that allow fatal brain illnesses to quickly spread, new Brown University research shows.

The findings are exciting, researchers say, because they might reveal a way to control the spread of prions through drug intervention. If a drug could be made that inhibits this fragmentation process, it could substantially slow the spread of prions, which cause mad cow disease and scrapie in animals and, in rare cases, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and kuru in humans.

Because similar protein replication occurs in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, such a drug could also slow progression of these diseases as well.

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Do genes affect bovine spongiform encephalopathy--also known as BSE, or "mad cow" disease? Are some cattle more susceptible than others?

To address these and other questions, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., have sequenced the bovine prion gene (PRNP) in 192 cattle that represent 16 beef and five dairy breeds common in the United States.

This work, partially funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, is expanding the understanding of how the disease works.

BSE is a fatal neurological disorder characterized by prions--proteins that occur naturally in mammals--that fold irregularly. Molecular biologist Mike Clawson and his Clay Center colleagues are examining PRNP variation in order to learn if and how prions correlate with BSE susceptibility

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The Centers for Disease Control and state health workers are trying to figure out if a man in Melbourne has a brain disorder, or the human form of mad cow disease.

Gary Dinges, 56, has been in a coma at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne for more than a week.

Health workers say it's possible he has mad cow disease, however they say it's unlikely because he didn't travel to high risk areas where he could have gotten the disease.

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Now your steak comes with a tattoo of the naked woman silhouette and the Grim Reaper

Somark Innovations, a small firm based out of St. Loius, successfully tested a new system of cattle branding using radio frequency identification, or RFID. The company already tested this new method on cows, cats and rats and are able to identify an animal from almost 4 feet away.

This "tattoo" uses a special RFID ink that can be invisible or colored. The "tattoo" is injected by a set of needles in a dot shape patterns which change with each injection. The tags can be read through fur and hair and have been biocompatibly tested so even humans can ingest the ink.

According to Somark, the initial use of the technology is to track cattle to "mitigate export trade loss scares from Mad Cow Disease". With this being their primary target, their secondary market includes pets, prime cuts of meat, and possibly military soldiers.

Ramos Mays, Chief Scientist on the project, says he is excited with the produced results. “This is a true proof-of-principle and mitigates most of the technological risk. This proves the ability to create a synthetic biometric or fake fingerprint with Biocompatible Chipless RFID Ink and read it through hair.”

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Mad Cow Disease, also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), affects the central nervous system of the cows. The brain loses control and the animal ultimately dies. Prion proteins are believed to cause the disease.

A mad cow’s milk may contain these prion proteins and the disease might be transmitted from the mad cow to humans who happen to drink its milk, according to a new study.

It has been proved by earlier studies that body fluids such as blood may carry these infectious proteins. But it was not clear whether milk could carry prions, until the study.

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Despite a recent rash of food-borne illnesses in the U.S., and heightened concerns about food safety in general, the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service wants to lift the ban on imports from Canada.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said the proposal protects U.S. consumers but implements "science-based trade relations with countries that have appropriate safeguards in place to prevent BSE."

"We previously recognized Canada's comprehensive set of safeguards and we have now completed a risk assessment confirming that additional animals and products can be safely traded," Johanns said. "Our approach is consistent with science-based international guidelines."

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1. Official Mad Cow Disease Home Page
Contains thousands of articles on mad cow and other diseases.
www.mad-cow.org

2. Food and Drug Administration Mad Cow Information
Web site offers various resources on mad cow disease including a general background, consumer information, recent FDA actions, veterinarian information
www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/bse.html

3. Mad Cow Disease: Is the USDA covering up an Epidemic?
Information from the Organic Consumers' Association related to mad cow/deer/pig/elk disease in the USA.
www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.htm

4. New mad cow woes - new worries about mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, chronic wasting disease in Europe and United States.
www.whyfiles.org/012mad_cow

5. NOVA Online | The Brain Eater - About the scientific research that linked "mad cow disease" to a related brain disease in humans.
www.pbs.org/nova/madcow

6. Howstuffworks "How Mad Cow Disease Works"
Mad cow disease is in the news again, with tests confirming the second case in the United States since December 2003.
www.science.howstuffworks.com/mad-cow-disease.htm

7. www.madcowblog.com - News on Mad Cow.

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SASKATCHEWAN (CBC) - Canadian farmers could soon be shipping older cattle across the border, thanks to the U.S. government's proposal to lift some of the last remaining import bans in place since the 2003 mad cow outbreak.

The U.S. Agriculture Department announced Thursday that it is looking to lift bans on live cattle born on or after March 1, 1999. The government also wants to allow bovine blood and blood products, small intestines and casings to cross the border.

In addition, the government is bringing back plans to allow imports of meat and meat products from animals of any age. These plans were introduced in January 2005, but were delayed.

The proposed changes are under review until March 12. The U.S. government is asking its citizens to provide feedback.

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WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Thursday it will seek to increase cattle and beef imports from Canada despite questions about Canadian safeguards against mad cow disease.

Canada discovered five new cases of the disease last year. One in particular was disturbing because the cow was born years after Canada adopted safeguards to keep the disease from spreading.

The United States banned Canadian cattle and beef after Canada found its first case of mad cow disease in May 2003. Later that year, an imported Canadian cow in Washington state became the first U.S. case of mad cow disease.

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Scientists have genetically engineered a dozen cows to be free from the proteins that cause mad cow disease, a breakthrough that may make the animals immune to the brain-wasting disease.

An international team of researchers from the U.S. and Japan reported Sunday that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for making the proteins, called prions. The disease didn't take hold when brain tissue from two of the genetically engineered cows was exposed to bad prions in the laboratory, they said.

Experts said the work may offer another layer of security to people concerned about eating infected beef, although though any food derived from genetically engineered animals must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they have developed cattle that may be biologically incapable of getting mad cow disease, the Washington Post reported.

As a result of genetic engineering, the animals lack a gene that is crucial to the progression of the disease. The cattle were not designed for use as food -- rather, they were developed so human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood without the risk that the products might get contaminated by the infectious agent that causes mad cow, the newspaper said.

The agent -- a protein known as a prion -- can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which can be fatal to humans.

Scientists said the animals will facilitate studies of prions, and similar techniques might be used in subsequent development of animals with more nutritious meats. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it will set more stringent standards for engineered food animals than it recently set for clones.

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