Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe

http://www.nature.com/news/deadly-animal-prion-disease-appears-in-europe-1.19759

by etiam • 10 years ago

269 170 10 years ago

Prions are fucking scary. They survive all regular decontamination procedures - alcohol, boiling, even autoclave. Patients had been infected through the sterilized scalpels and endoscopes.

azazqadir• 10 years ago

>Patients had been infected through the sterilized scalpels and endoscopes.

For someone who had an endoscope recently, that's really scary.

zymhan• 10 years ago

I mean, people were also at times infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from blood transfusions, but we realized the risk and took steps to mitigate it.

drunken-serval• 10 years ago

They don't survive bleach though. Which is helpful.

chrramirez• 10 years ago

For anyone who may want to know, prion diseases are sciencetific possible causes of a Zombie Apocalypse. That's why this new called my attention.

StavrosK• 10 years ago

By "zombie apocalypse", you mean slow-walking infected, craving brains and infecting anyone they bite?

Or just, you know, a disease that kills you if you eat brains? Because that's kind of the exact opposite of what zombies do.

dozzie• 10 years ago

"Braaains... Eeat my braaains..."

lxmorj• 10 years ago

A prion that infected people rapidly, through saliva-to-blood contact, and had similar symptoms to rabies without the rapid death would be very similar to traditional zombie lore.

The protein would probably also have to effect the olfactory glands, creating an attraction to uninfected humans.

carbocation• 10 years ago

It's hard to tell if you've been sincerely misled or if this is just a joke. Either way, though, it's not really plausible. The closest thing to a "zombie" that we get in nature are ants that are infected by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. This fungus causes the infected ants to crawl to a fungus-friendly location on a leaf and remain there until the fungus kills it and produces more spores.

hodwik8• 10 years ago

I think that Rabies was the inspiration for modern zombie stuff, actually.

cududa• 10 years ago

And he Xmen are a rough template outlining the future of human evolution.

ajuc• 10 years ago

Real life zombies (if they worked like the ones in movies) would all starve in the first month.

Imagine if lions eat a few kg of meat from an anteople, and then the rest of the antelope turned into another lion.

Raphmedia• 10 years ago

If zombies catch you and eat you, you're gone. If zombies catch you, bite you and you escape, you become a zombie. Generally it's not both at once.

gus_massa2• 10 years ago

xkcd estimates that in a similar case humans would survive 32 months: https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/

alexholehouse• 10 years ago

To be fair, this doesn't have to have originated via animal-to-animal infection, but could be an example of sporadic CWD.

As far as I know, sporadic CWD is relatively uncommon, but given CWD is caused by the PrP protein, and there are a number of known mutations in PrP which can increase its likelihood of undergoing prion-conversion, I'd hope they're going to sequence this animal's PrP gene to see it it shed's some light on the etiology.

Irrespective, this could still mean that CWD is now endemic in Europe.

>>

Updated for clarity and extra info/context (thanks pbhjpbhj!)

>>

CWD: Chronic Wasting Disease (deer-based prion disease - main topic of article)

PrP: The specific prion protein involved here. Note that (confusingly!) prions are both a 'class' of proteins but also refers to a specific protein (PrP).

Prions (class) are proteins which can exist in one of two states. In their soluble form they're happy-go-lucky proteins that are monomeric (i.e. exist as a single unit). However, these soluble-form prions can undergo a conformational change (re-arrange their shape) into a different conformation (the infectious form). The infectious form of the prion can do two specific things: 1) Aggregate (so all the previous soluble prion proteins get stuck into a big wad of protein) 2): Catalyze the conversion of soluble-form prion into the infectious form. Herein lies their infectivity - you get an exponential growth in the number of proteins in the infectious state.

Prions (PrP) is a specific protein found in many higher-order multicellular organisms that is the SPECIFIC protein that causes a range of prion diseases (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), BSE [mad cow], CWD, Scrapie etc). There are species barriers to these diseases, even though the proteins are pretty similar (i.e. humans cannot catch CWD from deer, even though the PrP protein misfolds in CWD and the same human version misfolds in CJD). These species barriers are convenient (!!) but very poorly understood, which is somewhat concerning.

Finally - it's worth point out prions aren't always bad. Fungi use them as a mechanism to facilitate non-genetic heritability/diversity [1], and we're increasingly finding examples of prion-like mechanisms that facilitate fast and irreversible signalling in cells (e.g. in the inflammation response [2])

[1] True, H. L. & Lindquist, S. L. A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity. Nature 407, 477–483 (2000).

[2] Cai, X. et al. Prion-like polymerization underlies signal transduction in antiviral immune defense and inflammasome activation. Cell 156, 1207–1222 (2014).

pbhjpbhj• 10 years ago

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).

I'm guessing it's in the article, but, well, y'know ...

djsumdog4• 10 years ago

So humans can't get a prion disease from eating infected wild game?

Where does alzheimer's disease fit into this? Are there instances where plaque build up is caused by protein misfolding, or are there other causes?

jcromartie• 10 years ago

The most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not alive: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense by sterilization. The proteins must literally be dissolved to neutralize them.

hodwik8• 10 years ago

I slept through biology class, could you explain how that's not also true for virii, given that they are also not "alive"?

danieltillett5• 10 years ago

Viruses have nucleic acids which are shredded by the high temperatures used to sterilise items (121C).

Dry heat will inactivate prions, but you need 200C for 4 hours or more which is more than most plastics can handle.

logfromblammo• 10 years ago

Viruses have two main components. The first is the delivery package. This is the element that is capable of delivering a payload into the interior of a cell. The second is the genetic code that hijacks a cell's normal functioning to produce more viruses. Viruses have a genetic component, either RNA or DNA, which contain instructions for building their viral envelopes. The genetic material is as vulnerable to damage as cellular DNA.

Prions are a single component. They are proteins with the same amino acid sequence as a protein normally produced by an organism. Except they have been misfolded. The geometry of the misfolded protein is such that it becomes a catalyst to reproduce the same misfolding error. There are no "brains" in them. They can arise entirely accidentally. They're a bit like the ice-nine from Vonnegut's _Cat's Cradle_, in which a crystal of a novel form of solid water that melts at a higher temperature can recruit liquid water to grow the crystal without limit. Each individual prion can misfold any number of same-sequenced amino acid chains.

And like the ice-nine, which melted at a temperature above human body temperature, the prion may be able to survive through more extreme conditions than other forms of the protein.

In the best case scenario, the prion does little more than cause a deficiency of the normally-folded protein forms in the body. In the worst-case scenario, it poisons some other process within the body in its misfolded form.

josu• 10 years ago

My understanding is that the fact that viruses are not alive is more of a convention, similar to Pluto not being a planet. This is more of a question than a statement, I would love it if somebody with some knowledge on the matter could chime in.

henrikschroder3• 10 years ago

virii

Pet peeve of mine, but it looks like you slept through English class as well. The plural of "virus" in English is "viruses". "virus" in latin is a mass word and has no plural, like "sugar" and "air".

Grazester3• 10 years ago

When I was a teen I was so freaked out by this fact during the mad cow episode in England that I never ate beef since. I would not for a few years even eat anything prepared in close proximity to where beef was being prepared. I lived in the Caribbean at the time...

danieltillett5• 10 years ago

The risk with beef was always pretty low. Actually not eating beef and eating an alternative meat is probably riskier given the prevelance of salmonella and other nasty bacteria in chicken.

ekianjo2• 10 years ago

Viruses are not alive either, actually. Viruses can only thrive and replicate once they are in a host system. On their own they can do nothing.

creshal• 10 years ago

And it makes them incredibly hard to fight. We basically have two ways of dealing with them:

• Use vaccination to train the host's immune system deal with it, should it ever encounter the full version.

• Use special drugs to slow down their replication to let the host's immune system deal with the rest.

Prions have no special, prion-only replication strategy we can target, and I'm not sure whether the immune system can be trained to attack only prions and not their regular protein equivalents.

pohl2• 10 years ago

How about this re-phrasing:

The most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not life: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense

While viruses are generally not considered to be alive, they are considered to be instances of life, aren't they?

esm2• 10 years ago

Spores formed by bacteria like C. botulinum or B. anthracis are also very difficult to neutralize. The key is knowing if there is an exposure risk and taking added precautions.

The good news is that some people are "immune" to developing an infectious prion disease. Turns out that certain mutations prevent normal proteins from interacting with a complementary prion in a way that would cause them to become misfolded.

djsumdog4• 10 years ago

So for people with Alzheimer's disease, is that plaque always associated with prions/protein mis-folding? (and if so, is it worthless to do things like "Learn a second language," "Learn to play more instruments," etc because our brain usage doesn't really play into the development of Alzheimer's? It's mostly a genetic thing?

restalis• 10 years ago

Yes, it can not be "killed" but, as other dangerous/infectious particles (like viruses), it can be destroyed. The immune system is able to naturally develop defenses against both live and inert foreign bodies, but only if the given body is over a certain size. The small objects (relative to cell size) do not trigger antibody creation and that is why this abnormally folded protein is so dangerous. There are, however, methods in which the organism is trained to recognize and develop natural defenses against bodies as small as a molecule, say, to prevent relapse in drug addicts:

http://www.doctortipster.com/11968-new-vaccine-against-metha...

http://www.livescience.com/21132-cocaine-vaccine-cure-addict...

http://www.voanews.com/content/scientists-develop-experiment...

This method may be a little bit costly (relative to promised returns of solving a problem that does not directly affect humans) and with limited effect, but still, it may be a way worth investigating.

shmageggy3• 10 years ago

Prions are a crazy, crazy phenomenon. From wikipedia:

A protein as a standalone infectious agent stands in contrast to all other known infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which contain nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, or both)

In my layman's understanding, they're like this bizarre edge case in the way proteins interact. Of all the myriad way a protien can fold, it happens to find one that induces the same malformation when it interacts with another protein. To me, it almost seems like as much of a mathematical/geometrical problem as a biological one. In any case, very interesting from the perspective of emergent behavior in complex systems.

danieltillett5• 10 years ago

Prions are one of those great examples that in biology every rule has an exception.

hga• 10 years ago

The rule I like here is that things like viruses and prions exist because they can.

Joof3• 10 years ago

It makes sense that we find this on occasion (once you accept that there exists some combination of folding that produces this). Once one protein folds in a way that can induce the same modification, it will replicate rather quickly.

Are there proteins that cause looping multiple-step reactions as well? Maybe that's what this is and I need to read more :p.

gilleain5• 10 years ago

What do you mean by "looping multiple-step reaction"? If prions are "A'(A)->A'", do you mean "A'(B)->B', B'(A)->A'"?

(Where A/A' are different forms of the same structure and A(B)->C means A acts on B to make C).

omegaham• 10 years ago

Yep. It makes me think of programming quines. Except deadly.

gilleain5• 10 years ago

You can break it down further into two separate surprises:

1) The normal form (PrPc) is mostly helical, while the diseased form (PrPsc) is mostly beta-sheet. 2) PrPsc catalyses the switch from helix to sheet.

I find the first to be more surprising. After all, chaperones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaperone_(protein)) exist to catalyse folding of proteins - although that is from partly folded to fully folded.

Brakenshire• 10 years ago

It's the same principle as the nucleation process which turns clouds into rain.

acjohnson552• 10 years ago

What's also wild to me is that, conversely, RNA can have enzyme-like behavior [1], including catalyzing their own synthesis [2]. Both types of molecules are amazingly versatile.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalysis

minikomi• 10 years ago

There's lots of weird stuff on the edge of "life"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid

lawpoop2• 10 years ago

There's also a hypothesis, to which I am partial, that RNA was the original self-replicating molecule[1], from which all life evolved, and that DNA was a later development.

DNA gets transcripted into RNA before it codes proteins, so an original RNA moelcule, being both a catalyst and a data store, eventually developed variations that in turn also produced pure catalysts (proteins) and a pure data store (DNA). But it's still the lynchpin of the reproduction process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

cLeEOGPw• 10 years ago

In theory, analogous RNA based disease should also be possible, where misshaped RNA molecule interacts with another misshaped RNA molecule and causes the same type of chain reaction as the protein in this case.

po• 10 years ago

I was thinking that Prions remind me of biological Ice-nine and sure enough there's a mention of it in the wikipedia article for Ice-nine:

Ice-nine has been used as a model to explain the infective mechanism of mis-folded proteins called prions which are thought to catalyze the mis-folding of the corresponding normal protein leading to a variety of spongiform encephalopathies such as kuru, scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine

FoeNyx• 10 years ago

Prions remind me of the apocalyptic theory about strangelets and strange matter :

"One speculation that has resulted from the idea is that a strangelet coming into contact with a lump of ordinary matter could convert the ordinary matter to strange matter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet#Dangers

Also mere ideas could also been seen as some mind-folding catalysts, language being the infective mechanism.

Variants of this trope often appear in literature (science-fiction or not).

For example in "Viruses of the Mind" : "Richard Dawkins analyzes the propagation of religious ideas and behaviors as a memetic virus"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind

ryandvm• 10 years ago

The most terrifying thing about prions is that since they're not reliant on the usual processes for reproduction, they're not susceptible to our usual weapons for dealing with disease (e.g. cooking, antibiotics/antiseptics, vaccines).

Dutchie• 10 years ago

Don't these type of complex molecules get completely destroyed when cooked? (Total layman here, so no rhetorical question).

joushou• 10 years ago

Nano-bender can help https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benderama#/media/File:Futurama...

kordless2• 10 years ago

induces the same malformation when it interacts with another protein

Sounds like a kill switch to me.

ctdonath2• 10 years ago

More like microbial zombie bites.

rdtsc• 10 years ago

So it is a bit like a self-replicating cellular automaton. Like game of life examples, except, well... in real life.

nonbel3• 10 years ago

"Of all the myriad way a protien can fold, it happens to find one that induces the same malformation when it interacts with another protein."

It doesn't really "just happen", amyloids consist of peptides folded into beta-sheets and aggregates of these seem to be the most thermodynamically stable structures it is possible for polypeptide chains (regardless of sequence) to form:

"From a wide range of in vitro experiments on peptides and proteins we now know that the formation of amyloid structures is not a rare phenomenon associated with a small number of diseases but rather that it reflects a well-defined structural form of the protein that is an alternative to the native state — a form that may in principle be adopted by many, if not all, polypeptide sequences

[...]

These observations, therefore, have led to the remarkable conclusion that, at the concentrations present in living systems, the native states may not always represent the absolute free energy minima of the corresponding polypeptide chains — the native form of a protein could in some cases simply be a metastable monomeric (or functionally oligomeric) state that is separated from its polymeric amyloid form by high kinetic barriers" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24854788

Edit:

I realized some people might not be aware of the connection to prions. Here it is from the same wikipedia page as cited by the parent:

"All known prions induce the formation of an amyloid fold, in which the protein polymerises into an aggregate consisting of tightly packed beta sheets." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

shmageggy3• 10 years ago

If that's the case, why don't we see them more often?

matthewmcg• 10 years ago

Right--as I understand it, it's not that different than Google's "Meeting Room Hardware Virus":

"I imagine it started with all of the adapters which were thrown around in every meeting room. Everyone with a Macbook of some flavor needed a DVI to VGA adaptor in order to use the projectors, so they were plentiful. Somehow, someone probably damaged one of them and smooshed a couple of pins into places where they should not have gone.

"Then, someone else forced this into their Mac. Perhaps two pins tried to go into just the one socket. At any rate, it would now break the socket and get it all out of whack. That socket, used with another adapter in another room, would then break that adapter. This new broken adapter would then go on to break even more Macbook DVI connectors.

Thus, we had a hardware virus." [1]

[1] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/

gmantom• 10 years ago

Sounds like AIDS.

What with the sockets and everything.

jotux• 10 years ago

Similar things happen with PCMCIA cards. The connector design on PCMCIA cards is just awful in that male pins are in the receptacle/PC. If you accidentally clog one of the holes on the PCMCIA cards connector and plug it into a receptacle it will bend the pin over.

rudolf0• 10 years ago

That might be the best analogy for prions I've ever heard. (At least for this audience.)

lambda• 10 years ago

Also reminiscent of the Zip drive "click of death" problem, in which bad media could damage drives in such a way that the drives could damage media that would further damage other drives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

shiro• 10 years ago

It sounds very plausible explanation of prion infection. I'm a layman and don't know how far the correspondence go---but if the correspondence holds, is there an agent that complements prions? That is, if prions are damaged receptacle, is there another protein for the damaged plug that propagates damage to other normal proteins?

activee• 10 years ago

Does it induces a positive loop ? If does it stops when there is no more protein it can interact with ?

Kristine19752• 10 years ago

From Wikipedia as well:

plants can be a vector for prions. When researchers fed hamsters grass that grew on ground where a deer that died with Chronic wasting disease (CWD) were buried, the hamsters became ill with CWD, suggesting that prions can bind to plants, which then take them up into the leaf and stem structure, where they can be eaten by herbivores, thus completing the cycle. It is thus possible that there is a progressively accumulating number of prions in the environment

Are you afraid yet? ;-)

ioquatix• 10 years ago

I, for one, welcome our new zombie reindeer overlords.

m_eiman• 10 years ago

Off topic, kinda: is anyone else having problems with nature.com not resolving? Firefox and Safari both fail to load it, but for some reason Chrome manages to find the server. OSX, latest.

jcfrei• 10 years ago

Since when can we reliably test for prions? Could it be that those misfolded proteins have been around forever?

FilterSweep• 10 years ago

Possibly, but the modern age has considerably more vectors for exposure to these misfolded proteins, and the last statement of what logfromblammo said[0], these misfolding proteins don't always affect core processes of the body.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11534177

technological• 10 years ago

Anyone want to learn more about prion related disease Kuru .. should watch this documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_tClcS6To

Grazester3• 10 years ago

I do remember reading about this disease and its spread through cannibalism

exhilaration• 10 years ago

I recently learned that Chronic Wasting Disease was spreading through deer in the United States, there's a map of its spread here: http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2700&q=323412

Apparently it's been shown that spiker monkeys can contract it but it hasn't (yet) been shown to be transmitted to humans.

mixmastamyk• 10 years ago

How does that work, considering deer are vegetarians? Or are these farmed deer being fed the last generation?

yorwba• 10 years ago

From the article linked by GP:

How does CWD spread?

The method of CWD transmission is unknown, however there is strong evidence to suggest that abnormally-shaped proteins called "prions" are responsible. The agent responsible for this disease may spread directly through animal to animal contact or indirectly through soil or other surface to animal contact. It is thought that the most common mode of transmission from an infected animal is via saliva and feces. A recent study confirms that CWD prions can be shed into the enviroment in feces from animals showing no clinical signs of the disease and can contaminate the soil, leading to infection in other animals. CWD can be spread from region to region by the movement of captive deer or through the improper disposal of a harvested deer transported from a CWD infected area.

mod• 10 years ago

CWD was just found this past deer season in my county, in the Arkansas Ozarks.

They did a harvest of deer in a small area near where CWD had been found (in an Elk, actually) and found a staggering number of the deer were infect, I think it was 36%.

There's virtually no way to get rid of it, apparently.

Anyway, the map is slightly out-of-date.

amorphid• 10 years ago

Too bad DNA doesn't stick around more than a few million years [1]. It'd be interesting to research the possibility of prions wiping out the dinosaurs from Mad Herbivore Disease.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA

JoeAltmaier• 10 years ago

It does, sort of. Dinosaur dna is in every bird!

pavel_lishin• 10 years ago

Why would preserved DNA help us figure this out?

djsumdog4• 10 years ago

Very true. It wouldn't at all would it? You'd need to have actual preserved cells and protein from that era.

mrfusion• 10 years ago

Could a prion have been the precursor to life? Seems simpler for a protien to accidentally come into existence and start replicating than a string of rna?

Or am I misunderstanding?

debacle• 10 years ago

It's likely that pre-RNA life and prions shared a lot of similarities.

gilleain5• 10 years ago

That would be a protein that catalyses its own creation from parts (amino acids) rather than prions which catalyse a change in shape.

There is a paper roughly in this area (polyphosphates and peptides in an autocatalytic cycle) here :

http://cosmology.com/Abiogenesis100.html

martian• 10 years ago

Prions are both beautiful and terrifying. One of my favorite science fiction stories is Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora". He makes great use of the prion concept, and its consequences for human life, in relation to space exploration. Fascinating read if you're interested in the topic.

Kristine19752• 10 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation! I started reading it, and it's well-written and very interesting.

mrkgnao• 10 years ago

What does a normal reindeer brain look like?

gus_massa2• 10 years ago

I was thinking exactly the same. Or to be more precise, is it visible in the image the damage caused by the illness?

I'm not feeling lucky: https://www.google.com/search?q=reindeer+brain&tbm=isch

Balgair• 10 years ago

Since there are a lot of questions and very good discussions today, I thought I would share a good resource for bio made for comp-sci people: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wcohen/GuideToBiology-sampleChapter-...

If anyone knows any other good resources or intros, please share as well.

nxzero• 10 years ago

Prions: Killer Zombies

"You Can't Kill What's Not Alive: Prions cannot be destroyed by boiling, alcohol, acid, standard autoclaving methods, or radiation. In fact, infected brains that have been sitting in formaldehyde for decades can still transmit spongiform disease. Cooking your burger until it is well done will not destroy the prions!" http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/molecules/prions/

"Eating human brains helped Papua New Guinea tribe resist disease, research shows." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/10/brains-helpe...

Original name for the prions was "trembling in fear" - or Kuru: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

Mahn• 10 years ago

So there's no cure, no vaccine, and you can't kill them. Terrifying. An outbreak of this thing would have free pass to eradicate entire species, including us.

Lawtonfogle2• 10 years ago

Oh, and the incubation time can be extremely long. A burger you ate 5 years ago could've been infected but it could still be years before you begin showing signs. I remember reading a bit about some connection between prions and dementia in elderly individuals but I don't remember any of the details.

One sci-fi horror series had an episode where the plot was that some mass produced chickens were getting ill because the feed was made from other chickens and they eventually discovered that it involved a prion that was dangerous to humans as well. This was discovered after massive numbers of those chickens had been consumed in large quantities by society.

patall4• 10 years ago

No. It is just that we do not have a cure or vaccine because it does not appear that often. And no, prions will not eradicate entire species because they not living under any definition. Therefore there is no direct evolution, if you are resistant against an outbreak, your are resistant against it. The prion cannot develop to overcome this resistance. Essentially, a prion disease is very like the computer virusses we have today: They do not change their source code, so fixing the issue in your code will disable them.

ckinnan• 10 years ago

>Although the disease is not known to be transmissible to humans

This is not quite correct, the disease is believed to be transmittable to humans, but we're not in the practice of eating deer brains, so there are no confirmed cases. All of the states with CWD have advisories on reducing the risk with consumption. Eg: http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/deer-carc...

Given that we don't really know how CWD is transmitted among animals it is still pretty worrying.

braderhart• 10 years ago

Has anyone else read this, because it looks really promising?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/phage-alzheimers-cure...

danielsiders• 10 years ago

Also see the study on aerosol transmission of prions:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/

tinix• 10 years ago

All I can think of is this now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_wasting_disease

nsajko• 10 years ago

Source: http://www.vetinst.no/eng/Highlights/The-first-detection-of-...

Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe

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