The dreadful disease of Alzheimer’s devastates the patient, as well as the loved ones who watch the person they cherish devolve before their eyes.
A new study done at the University College London found that:
Until now, it was thought that Alzheimer’s occurred only as a result of inheriting certain genetic mutations causing the familial version of the disease, or from random “sporadic” events within the brain of elderly people, said Professor John Collinge, head of neurodegenerative diseases at University College London.
Eight adults, who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), due to contaminated growth hormones, had their brains autopsied. The findings revealed seven of the eight had misfolded proteins, factors associated with early stages of Alzheimer’s. They were between the ages of 36 and 51, the youngest ever seen in this early stage.
However, the findings of a study into eight people who were given growth hormone injections when they were children have raised the disturbing possibility that Alzheimer’s can be transmitted under certain circumstances when infected tissues or surgical instruments are passed between individuals.
Could a blood transfusion with prion proteins or “protein seeds”, or even unsterile surgical equipment (as the prion proteins can stick to metal and survive intense sterilizing heat), pass these seeds onto a person?
Alzheimer’s disease is now considered a “prion disease”. Prions, short for proteinaceous infectious particles, are misfolded proteins that carry the ability to trigger further proteins to misfold, leading to debilitating brain disorders,
Though this disease is not contagious in that it cannot be passed on to another via carrying for someone with the disease, this information regarding “protein seeds” that could be passed on via tissue or transfusion should be deeply studied.
John Hardy, professor of Neuroscience at UCL, said: “I think we can be relatively sure that it is possible to transmit amyloid pathology by the injection of human tissues which contain the amyloid of Alzheimer’s disease. Does it have implications for blood transfusions? Probably not, but this definitely deserves systematic epidemiological investigation.”
For a deeper look into these new findings read here at the Independent.
Source: Independent
what retard did this study?
It can be hereditary but not infectious. That’s like saying cancer is contagious.
I pray not.
It took the idiot “scientists” and doctors many decades to figure out that stomach ulcers were not caused by “stress,” but by an infectious organism. That’s why I have never believed a single thing those fools have ever told us.
I don’t believe it is a transmittable disease.
Um…no.
Infectious to the people doing the necropsy… Others not so much.