- Note - Dr. Patricia Doyle and I have
been stating this, clearly and unambiguously, for close to ten years now.
This report is no surprise. - JR
-
- Prions Adhere To Soil Minerals
And Remain Infectious
-
- Published in the Journal PLoS Pathogens
An open-access journal published by the nonprofit organization Public Library
of Science.
-
- Scientists have confirmed that prions,
the mysterious proteins thought to cause chronic wasting disease (CWD)
in deer, latch on tightly to certain minerals in soil and remain infectious.
-
- The discovery that prions stay deadly
despite sticking to soil comes as a surprise, because while many proteins
can bind to soil, that binding usually changes their shapes and activities.
-
- In a paper published in the journal PLoS
Pathogens (April 14*), scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
suggest that certain soil types serve as natural prion repositories in
the wild. As animals regularly consume soil to meet their mineral needs,
it's possible that prion-laden soil particles contribute to the transmission
of prion disease such as CWD among animals.
-
- "Prions most likely enter soil via
excretion or from the carcasses of infected animals," says lead author
Christopher Johnson, a UW-Madison doctoral student in the department of
animal health and biomedical sciences. "Our results suggest that reducing
the number of infected animals -- as has been done in the recent outbreak
of CWD in Wisconsin -- could limit the potential for further (disease)
spread. These results also suggest that other species that share ranges
with CWD-infected deer may be exposed to soil-bound prions, increasing
the potential of CWD transferring to other species."
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- * Full text of article:
- http://pathogens.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get
-document&doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.0020032
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