Another Neurodegenerative Disease Linked To a Prion 53
MTorrice writes: A new study concludes that a brain protein causes the rare, Parkinson's-like disease called multiple systems atrophy (MSA) by acting like a prion, the misbehaving type of protein infamously linked to mad cow disease. The researchers say the results are the most definitive demonstration to date that proteins involved in many neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, exhibit prion-like behavior: They can misfold into shapes that then coax others to do the same, leading to protein aggregation that forms neurotoxic clumps. If these other diseases are caused by prion-like proteins, then scientists could develop treatments that slow or stop disease progression by designing molecules that block prion propagation.
Too Tired To Read (Score:4, Funny)
For a moment I thought it read "Another Neurodegenerative Disease Linked to Porn". I was very concerned during that moment.
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Don't worry, Fapping@Home is hard at work looking for the cure!
Folding@Home (Score:3)
I wonder how much Folding@Home helped contribute to discovering this.
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Zero. It was 100% funded by big bad Pharma that you guys all claim to hate.
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Wrong. It was funded by the customers of big bad Pharma.
Remember, all corporate research is ultimately funded by customers. Before you go giving them some humanitarian award. don't forget it's always the customers that pay the bill.
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Wrong. It was funded by the customers of big bad Pharma.
Customers didn't choose to fund the research, hence, it's not their baby. And are we going to credit the banks too? They fondled that funding a little bit, sometimes between customer and pharma company. Maybe some drug dealers of the illegal sort? Fast food restaurants? ATM machines?
There's a saying that I think applies here. Money has no provenance. It doesn't matter where the money came from. The people who decided to fund the research are the ones who should be credited for funding the research.
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It's not their "baby", but it's their money.
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Really? Did they print it themselves?
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No, they spent it themselves.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that a consumer economy is funded by the consumers? That the labor and productivity and earnings of people pay all the bills? Is this some artifact left over from the supply-side economics of the '80s?
No exceptions.
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You're missing the point, though.
Yes, that money passed through the hands of the customers. The customers passed that money to the pharmaceutical company for a good (drugs) that they wanted. That money then entered the account of the company which funded the research. The consumers didn't choose that path for what used to be their money.
Now, if the consumers had a *choice*, that money could have been spent on research for prion-like diseases, but more likely, it would have been spent on a trip to the Bah
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Why is it so hard for people to understand that a consumer economy is funded by the consumers?
There's more to an economy than just consumers. By merely using the term "consumer" you imply the existence of producers who produce the goods and services which are consumed by the consumers. Why is it so hard to credit the people who make decisions with the consequences, good and bad, of those decisions?
That the labor and productivity and earnings of people pay all the bills?
Which is tangential to your assertion of a consumer economy. One doesn't speak of the labor, productivity, or earnings of a consumer. A consumer consumes by definition and consumption is not dependent on t
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I agree. It is merely a mechanism of siphoning money from those who work to those who own.
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This is so completely wrong. The customers paid for a drug. They got the drug, and now the money they paid for it isn't theirs. Big bad pharma then took the money that belonged to them and paid for the research.
Your claim only holds water if the customers had a choice (yes, I'll pay $5 for the drug, and $5 to fund future research!) and chose to invest in research. They didn't.
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Let me know when the day comes that a pharmaceutical company chooses to spend money on research and not recoup it from consumers, plus profit.
It's always consumers that pay, in front or at the end, it's always consumers.
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That's not relevant. My employer paid for my labor. What I do with the money once it's mine isn't the responsibility or to the credit of my employer. What a pharmaceutical company does with their profits once they belong to them are in exactly the same way not to the credit of their customer.
You can keep following that chain back indefinitely. It's not really the consumer's money, it's their employers, or their governments, or whatever. It's a nonsensical view.
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That talking point is only to be used for discussing fees and taxes. Get with the program.
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Folding at home caused it!
hah (Score:4, Funny)
So my grampa was right - too much pron makes you blind!
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And vegans will be affected even less. This means that generations from now, all of humanity will be smug, peachy, insufferable feminine hygiene products. When the first PBS signals of this change reach and are interpreted by other intelligent civilizations, they will send a special fleet to wipe us out.
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And that would be different from today how? The only difference I see is that more people currently do eat meat.
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Prions are in milk. Vegetarians are affected. Vegans, perhaps not. Issue is, the typical replacement for meat, tofu, increases estrogen, and thus puts people at risk of breast cancer and dementia. And that's assuming you put the effort in to have proper nutrients in your diet--something that non-vegetarians don't worry about as much as meat helps provide what is lacking in fruits and vegetables (Yes, most lack certain vitamins, effort must be made to maintain a healthy diet by increasing consumption of
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No food is perfectly safe. Veggies often have pesticides. Water (and most everything else, actually) has harmful chemicals leeched from plastic. You just can't escape risk no matter what you eat.
One can reduce the major food risks significantly without too much effort....but....that won't be what gets us in the end. The overuse of antibiotics in factory farming will create essentially untreatable (and contagious) diseases. The vegans will still catch these diseases from their meat-eating neighbors.
Ther
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Food is a deadly substance - everyone who eats it, dies. It should be banned immediately (think of the children).
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Gardens may contain prions... (Score:2)
I know someone who gardens on a friend's small farm. The neighbor's mother had a neurodegenerative disorder, the neighbor's neighbor's son had a neurodegenerative disorder, and the neighbor has been beginning to show signs of a neurodegenerative disorder for the last year or so.
I asked one of the top prion researchers in the country if there could be a problem with prions in the soil being absorbed into the various plants on the property that people eat (garden, apple trees, etc...)
His response: "That's a
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What they showed was that what was presumably a misfolding disorder was also infectious. They didn't show a means of transmission that would be viable in the wild - you don't just have someone's brain matter fly into your head. This isn't the same prion (PRP) as that related to Mad Cow. The means of transmission might be completely different. It might not transmit at all - it might be that proteins misfold spontaneously, and once you've gotten one (or more likely, a few) they drag a bunch of others along, b
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Prions can come from eating meat for certain. That's the whole Mad Cow Disease thing.
However, it is not clear that this is the *only* way they can be introduced to the body. They could arise spontaneously because a prion is simply a "malignant" form of a protein that the body already produces normally.
So, it is possible that there could be genetic predisposition, or even environmental causes which introduce prion-forms to the body by re-folding an existing protein already in the body.
Stanley Pruisner (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting for me to see this guy's name come up. I remember reading a fairly derogatory article about him in Scientific American in the 80s, all but calling him a fraud. Sometimes the "fraud" is proven right. Worth remembering.
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Not worth remembering AT ALL. The full force and credit of the mainstream media is NEVER used to discredit people working on projects that might cause embarrassment to the establishment, or worse find simple root-cause explanations for ailments that could have their symptoms managed with expensive drugs. Never, ever. Your example is the one and only time one of these crackpot, terrorist, conspiracy-theorist, tinfoil-hat frauds has ever been proven right.
sarcasm off
It's definitely worth remembering, and
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Mm. The prion work has been largely supported. However, he was not the first person to originate the concept of an infectious protein, and there's an argument to be made that his primary contribution to the field was the name "prion".
I wouldn't disregard his work, but double check everything. (A former labmate in a previous lab went toe to toe against him for her dissertation work - and totally won, but watching him try to bash by means of his position when he just didn't have the data was pretty unsettling
Damn Toyota!!! (Score:2)
They thought they could get away with a defective product - oh wait - the culprit is a PRION, not a PRIUS! Nvm...
Prions are for mad cows. (Score:1)
Sorry someone had to say it.
But really how do we get to "scientists could develop treatments that slow or stop disease progression by designing molecules that block prion propagation."
from "Another Neurodegenerative Disease Linked To a Prion"
Does having more than one disease use the same vulnerability make it easier to fix somehow?
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Are prions a life form? (Score:2)
If you define viruses as a life form, then I think prions ought to be considered a life form. They work by coaxing something else into reproducing themselves.
I'm probably not the first person to have thought about this. To me, it sounds like this could be a model for theories of abiogenesis.
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Re: Are prions a life form? (Score:2)
I wonder. Are all proteins capable of being misfolded in a prion-like way?
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Only if you consider an automatic traffic gate a life form. It coaxes people to build more by letting cars into the parking garage until it is full! ... No.
Otherwise