What is a prion and how does it cause disease? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Prion diseases are caused in people when an aberrant form of a protein that is already in our bodies infects us, and causes the normal protein to fold like it, resulting in neurological disease. A new study found that one type of a prion disease could be accurately diagnosed with two or more skin biopsies. Johns Hopkins neurologist Ted Dawson explains.

Dawson: All of us have the prion protein. The aberrant ones, the Creutzfeldt-Jakob prion, it's the same protein it just folds differently. Its structure is different and the abnormal prion makes the normal prion misfold into the abnormal prion, with a significant latency. It's the abnormal misfolded prion that causes the disease.     :32

Dawson says making the diagnosis is important since prion diseases are infectious. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.