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Comment by bigodbiel | Hacker News Reader

anything involving prions is terrifying!

Want to get really terrified? Read about the chances of prions being passed between people. The first recognized prion-STD will come one day. It may already have happened. We don't test for these things. We could all be infected with hundreds of prions without knowing it. What pushes them into "disease" territory is negative symptoms.

But the upside is that prions are nothing new. Although we may not appreciate our defenses, the fact that we are all still alive is reason to believe we evolved some form of resistance to them.

What freaked me out was learning that it is extremely difficult to sterilize surgical equipment such that prions are removed. If you are operated on with surgical equipment that was previously used on a person infected with prions (I'm talking about human prions here and not deer prions), even if the equipment was thoroughly sterilized, the prions are almost certainly still there and can be transferred to you.

It reminds me of the recent discussions around eyes and prions:

"Infectious 'Prions' Found in the Eyes of Patients with Fatal Brain Disease"

"The results also raise concern about the potential for the disease to spread through routine eye exams or eye surgeries, during which equipment could become contaminated with prions, the researchers said."

https://www.livescience.com/64140-creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-...

hmm non-medical info here, but .. the washing action is important in cleaning, not just chemicals and heat.. many infections have to pass a certain critical volume to catch on.. no idea about prions specifically, but be careful about getting upset.. it is a problem itself

The hypothesis for many prion diseases is that of "seeding" whereby a small number (or maybe even a single) prion protein acts as a template to induce misfolding of other proteins with similar sequence but native folds [1,2]. This causes a chain reaction in the proliferation of the prion protein inside the cell, and then in other cells as prion proteins are transported/secreted to the surrounding tissue.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665718/#S1titl... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449729/

There is an advantage in thinking about prions, and proteins more generally, as crystals rather than biological systems. A vat of fluid can sit for decades without ever forming a crystal. But then the addition of a single seed can give rise to an infinitely large, growing, structure.

>whereby a small number (or maybe even a single) prion protein acts as a template to induce misfolding of other proteins

So, maybe Vonnegut was onto something when he wrote Cat's Cradle

Prions are more like a persistent toxic chemical than any virus or bacteria.

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