From the European Society for Clinical Virology 2022 Conference in Manchester UK, Vincent speaks with Richard Knight about prion diseases and the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalitis that led to cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
Host: Vincent Racaniello
Guest: Richard Knight
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Links for this episode
- National CJD Research and Surveillance Unit
- Clinical diagnosis of human prion disease (Prog Mol Biol Trans Sci)
- Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Handbook Clin Viral)
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Adv Exp Med Biol)
- Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!
Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv
Informative yet pretty disheartening episode, considering that all prion diseases are fatal. One thing I did not quite understand is the detection method: Is there really no way to find out whether a patient has one of those other than exemption of everything else? Are there really no indicator in brain images, blood or spinal fluid? Can one really just say “because you don’t have this, this and that, it has to be X”? Because that sounds rather unscientific to prove the existence of something by proving the non-existence of something else which adds to the disheartening feel of this topic/episode.