Mutated Monstrosities: The Science Behind Prion Diseases
At this point, who hasn’t heard of zombies? Often called the living dead or the undead, they are a staple of horror movies– so much so that zombie movies have become their own genre, inspiring movies, games, and other types of media to adapt them for their own stories. While terrifying as a concept, zombies act as a fun albeit dangerous threat that remains entirely fictitious.
Or are they?
While we perceive zombies to be purely make-believe, both animals and humans alike are scarily capable of manifesting zombie-like symptoms. So, in time for the spooky season, let’s dig up the mystery behind prion diseases, the real-life “zombie virus.”
To begin with the basics, proteins are chains of amino acids that help the body perform properly. These can be found all over your body and function as enzymes, structural support, hormones, and many more. The titular prions are a specific type of wrongly-folded protein in your brain, which are also known as proteinaceous infectious proteins. Spread into the victim by eating an already-infected organism, prion diseases work by causing other proteins within its brain to misfold. In rare cases, the protein will misfold by itself without external infection. A brain-damaging infection spread by consumption–seems a bit familiar, does it not?
The main varieties of prions include the widely-publicized mad cow disease and its more zombie-like brother, the chronic wasting disease. Mad cow disease is a variant of prions that occurs after the cattle consume infected feed containing the prions’ agent. This eventually leads to a fatal brain disorder, with its flesh still having the capability to transmit the disease. Chronic wasting disease, seemingly appearing to be a regular variant of prions, can lead to deer developing unusual symptoms such as appearing malnourished, losing balance, and showing signs of flesh decay, as seen in the image below.
AI enhanced version of https://hallrecord.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Deer.jpg
This infected deer showcases the real horror that lies just beneath the veil of real-life zombies. In extreme cases, the flesh itself can be seen rotting on its sides as blood drips off its skin. As the infection progresses, the deer’s brain slowly loses its ability to function, causing it to lose balance, strength, and calmness before the deer eventually succumbs to the disease.
While it may seem like a non-existent issue to humans, within the wider category of prion diseases lies a human variant called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). This variant does not afflict the same bodily damage as chronic wasting disease, but its effects are far worse on the neurological level. Patients of CJD suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other disorders. While it is rare in humans, it usually arises due to the contamination of tissue in an organ transplant or the consumption of meat with a variant of mad cow disease.
The notion of zombies in our modern-day pop culture, while obviously fictitious, can serve as a way for the general public to understand and acknowledge the threat of disease and infection. Zombies can be viewed as an “allegory of communicable disease” because the spread of infectious diseases often parallels the depiction of hordes of zombies slowly infecting the wider population. Prion diseases, while terrifying as a modern phenomenon, can be and have been prevented because of proper procedures in stopping transmission. So even if they do not exist in any manner, understanding the threat of zombie-like diseases through the lens of the living dead can go a long way in improving the safety and health of our communities.
Sources:
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/prion-diseases
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/prion-diseases
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10333728/
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/about/index.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626585/
