• Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Fuck prions and the horse they rode in on. They’re not even alive, so you can’t kill them. No vaccine, no cure, and thoroughly cooking your food is still no guaranteed way to get rid of them.

    Nature’s silent assassins, and they take their sweet time doing it too. By the time you first notice it’s already far too late.

    • WIPocket@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Wdym too late? Is there something you could have done if you knew “soon enough”?

    • bananabenana@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Prion vaccines would work for sure. Their rarity makes it not all that worthwhile as a public health measure

        • Instigate@aussie.zone
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          6 months ago

          Prion diseases are fatal infectious neurodegenerative disorders and prototypic conformational diseases, caused by the conformational conversion of the normal cellular prion protein (PrPC) into the pathological PrPSc isoform.

          The immune system does not develop a bona fide immune response against prion infection, as PrPC and PrPSc share an identical protein primary structure, and prions seem not to represent a trigger for immune responses. This asks for alternative vaccine strategies, which focus on PrPC-directed self-antibodies or exposure of disease-specific structures and epitopes. Several groups have established a proof-of-concept that such vaccine candidates can induce some levels of protective immunity in cervid and rodent models without inducing unwanted side effects. This review will highlight the most recent developments and discuss progress and challenges remaining.

          Have a read through the full article and sources below and you can take a look at some novel approaches being evaluated at the moment:

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9918406

    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Well, viruses aren’t alive either. I would say they are very similar to Prions in the aspect, that it is just a rogue biological building block, able to get itself reproduced, to the dismay of the body.

      Also there is no reason, why you couldn’t develop vaccines against Prions. It could be even simpler, because they have to be shaped very specifically to cause the harm they do, and it should be easy to break that specific shape with something attaching to it.