1-30-24

As pathogenic prions accumulate, people may start to develop prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and mad cow disease.

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By Marina Zhang 1/24/2024 Updated:1/27/2024

The COVID-19 virus and its vaccine sequences have a prion region on their surface spike proteins. Earlier in the pandemic and vaccine rollout, some researchers were concerned that these prion regions may promote incurable prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

In December 2023, researchers from Oxford showed that 8 percent of the time, the body does not make spike protein from Pfizer mRNA vaccines but may form aberrant proteins instead. This has led researchers to investigate the potential risks of such unintentional formations.

Subsequently, on Jan. 12, retired French biomathematician Jean-Claude Perez published a preprint study discussing whether such mistakes could lead to the formation of prion-like proteins. He concluded that prion-like protein formation is possible.

A previous peer-reviewed paper by Mr. Perez and his co-authors in January 2023 recorded 26 cases of CJD. Those afflicted reported that their first symptoms manifested within one to 31 days of their last COVID-19 vaccination or infection.

All patients experienced a rapid worsening of their condition over the ensuing months and died.

What Are Prions?

Prions are proteins that exist naturally in the brain. They perform crucial tasks and are necessary for human health.

However, on rare occasions, a healthy prion may misfold into a pathogenic prion. This misfold is irreversible, and from then on, the pathogenic prion converts all healthy prions it encounters into pathogenic prions.

As pathogenic prions accumulate, people may start to develop prion diseases such as CJD and mad cow disease.

Other researchers have also proposed that Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, both of which exhibit an accumulation of misfolded proteins, may also be prion diseases.

Prions are defined by their amino acid sequences. Prion-like sequences are rich in glutamine and asparagine amino acids, and human or foreign proteins that contain such regions are at risk of initiating prion diseases.

“Amino acid sequence can tell us if a protein can potentially act as a prion and show prion-like functions,” said Vladimir Uversky, PhD, a professor at the University of South Florida specializing in molecular medicine. “Not all proteins with prion-like sequences will undoubtedly act as prions. Even prion protein itself will cause prion disease in very few cases.

“If, however, one got such proteins, then there is a chance that [the proteins] can trigger some pathology. It is not clear when, how, and with what probability this would happen, but the overall chances of getting something bad are definitely increased,” Mr. Uversky told The Epoch Times, comparing the prion protein to “a time bomb with a dysfunctional or stochastic timer.”

How Would mRNA Vaccines Form Prion Proteins?

One can think of mRNA vaccines as instructions used to make spike proteins. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, the mRNA vaccines contain a high percentage of pseudouridine, which is less common in the human body. The extra pseudouridine makes the process more prone to “frameshift errors.”

Frameshift errors occur when the cell’s protein production machinery accidentally misses one or two bases in the mRNA sequence. Since mRNA bases are read in groups of threes, a frameshift breaks up the original sets of the sequence, affecting all sequences downstream of the error.

In his research, Mr. Perez found a frameshift by one base retains the prion-like sequences, while a frameshift by two bases eliminates them.

He also found that the frameshift sequences share similarities to bacterial proteins on the brain-eating amoeba and human nuclease proteins, proteins capable of breaking apart DNA bonds.

Spike Proteins and Prion Diseases in the Literature

Numerous papers in the literature have linked COVID-19 spike protein to prion formations.

The spike protein naturally has a prion-like domain at the region where it binds to other receptors. SARS-CoV-2 is the only coronavirus with a prion-like domain in its spike protein.

In September 2023, Swedish researchers published a preprint finding that spike proteins may accelerate Alzheimer’s and prion disease formation.

The authors found specific spike protein sequences carried amyloid sequences and extracted them. When these sequences were supplemented with human prion and amyloid proteins, the spike sequences accelerated the proteins’ aggregation.

Neurologist Dr. Suzanne Gazda told The Epoch Times she is very concerned about the implications of prion disease acceleration and formation due to COVID-19 vaccination and infections.

Another study published in October 2023 found that spike protein can bind to alpha-synuclein, an unfolded protein that accumulates in Parkinson’s disease. The authors found that introducing spike protein to alpha-synuclein also increased its aggregation.

Several studies have linked COVID-19 and its vaccines with prion diseases.

A Turkish case study detailed the case of a 68-year-old man who developed symptoms of CJD weeks after being administered the COVID mRNA vaccine.

Around one to two weeks after administration, he became forgetful; two months later, he began losing his ability to find words. By the third to fourth month, he had developed a progressive speech disorder, confusion, agitation, and involuntary contraction of his left arm and leg.

A 2022 Italian case report examined the case of a man in his early 40s who developed CJD two months after a mild COVID-19 infection. He first started seeing black shadows when closing his eyes, “followed by dizziness, difficulty reading and worsening of balance,” the authors wrote.

Three months post-infection, the patient reported loss of coordination in his left arm and loss of reflexes in his legs.