MAD COW DISEASE - Page 4

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Page 4

Jun 12, 2001

I must say that I also have problems with prions' transmissibility. Prions are proteins, and in order for the ones from cows to cause disease they have through go your gastrointestinal tract, your blood stream and cross what is called the to blood-brain barrier, whose function is to stop big molecules from going into the brain.

Now, in the GI are proteases, enzymes that destroy--digest--most of the proteins that you eat. This is one of the reasons it has not been possible to design a way to take insulin orally--it is destroyed in the GI. Insulin is a much smaller protein than prions.

Even if the prions should make it through the GI system and into the blood, they should be destroyed by your immune system; and if they survive all that, they still have to cross the blood-brain barrier, enter the cells, find the normal prions and convert them to pathogenic. Aren´t they stretching it too much?

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