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Science 14 October 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5746, p. 191
DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5746.191a
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Figure 1 The factors enabling horizontal prion spread for diseases, including sheep scrapie and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, have been discussed for many years. Seeger et al. (p. 324) have found that infectious urinary prions are consistently shed by mice suffering from chronic inflammatory kidney conditions (nephritis) long before any clinical symptoms of scrapie are seen. In the absence of kidney inflammation, or if inflammation occurs in other organs (such as the liver in hepatitis), urinary prion infectivity was never observed, even in transgenic mice that overexpress the prion protein. Thus, inflammation of excretory organs may be one of the cofactors responsible for the spread of prion diseases, and it may be important to screen biopharmaceuticals derived from urine.

CREDIT: SEEGER ET AL.




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