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Biotech Science

Could Diabetes Spread Like Mad Cow Disease? (sciencemag.org) 128

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: Prions are insidious proteins that spread like infectious agents and trigger fatal conditions such as mad cow disease. A protein implicated in diabetes, a new study suggests, shares some similarities with these villains. Researchers transmitted diabetes from one mouse to another just by injecting the animals with this protein. The results don't indicate that diabetes is contagious like a cold, but blood transfusions, or even food, may spread the disease.

The work is "very exciting" and "well-documented" for showing that the protein has some prionlike behavior, says prion biologist Witold Surewicz of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasn't connected to the research. However, he cautions against jumping to the conclusion that diabetes spreads from person to person. The study raises that possibility, he says, but "it remains to be determined."

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Could Diabetes Spread Like Mad Cow Disease?

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  • by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Saturday August 05, 2017 @01:57PM (#54947429)

    It's called the pancreatitis virus. Much like there is a hepatitis virus that can destroy the liver, there is a pancreatitis virus that can destroy the pancreas and lead to diabetes. The prionlike protein in the article though seems to be new and this is much welcome research.

    I've heard similar things with people with metabolic syndrome, e.g., twins one is fat and the other isn't fat, one has metabolic syndrome and the other doesn't. Take a bit of fat from the one with metabolic syndrome and inject it in the skinny one and they start getting more abnormal fat concentration in the place where it was injected. Perhaps it's a similar issue?

    • The study in the article references Type 2 diabetes. The method you're describing seems to more closely describe Type 1.

  • Not the best summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by LordNelsonthe2nd ( 2817893 ) on Saturday August 05, 2017 @02:02PM (#54947445)

    In case others wonder about the same, the article is about TYPE 2 diabetes. Just writing "diabetes" is quite pointless since type 1 and 2 are completely different. (Got type 1 myself for 26 years)

    • type 1 and 2 are completely different.

      And Type 3 is definitely NOT spread by a virus. Unless you consider the surgeon who removes your pancreas to be a virus....

  • Good job science for writing the next article for Goop and the Food Babe.....they will just remove all hedges of knowledge and any possible explanations for this behavior and turn it into the next clean eating nonsense.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's fascinating that a misfolded protein can create all this havoc. It's surprising it doesn't happen more often, really.

    • Don't be so sure it doesn't. There are innumerable things that happen that humans have no idea about.
      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        There are innumerable [scary] things that happen that humans have no idea about.

        Some diseases even make you grab pussies, tweet all night, turn orange, run for president, and insult allies.

  • Although there is an effect of vegetarian diets on diabetes (beyond BMI), I don't think it is strong enough to suggest that Type 2 diabetes is a zoonotic disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Type 1, the far more severe condition where the insulin producing cells are typically destroyed, has been well established as being primarily an auto-immune problem. Dr. Faustmann's work at Mass. General Hospital has demonstrated a successful cure in lab animals, and is in its second round of human testing: the auto-immune problem is treated by small doses of the BCG vaccine, used primarily for tuberculosis worldwide, in small doses for 30 days with very tight blood sugar control. Decades, in fact 5 decades

  • OK, here's a huge detour - a bit of potted history of mad cow disease...

    Human's don't contract "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, to give the disease its full name). Rather, we contract what medicine knows as vCJD, or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

    One of the most disturbing aspects of the history of BSE actually concerns the way that it was introduced to the animal population and how it spread.

    Western nations like the UK (where BSE was most prevalent) have followed int
  • The work is "very exciting" and "well-documented" for showing that the protein has some prion-like behavior, says prion biologist...

    "Very exciting"? Bad choice of words. No, it's fucking "scary".

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