This book presents a clear and authoritative account of the prion diseases for the non-specialist. It deals with the history of scrapie in sheep, the spread of kuru through cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, BSE, which has killed 170,000 cattle in the UK, and the question of whether the newvariant form of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD) results from eating BSE-infected meat. All aspects of the diseases are covered, including genetics, clinical aspects, laboratory research, epidemiology, and field studies. Accessibly written by authors who are leading researchers in the field, it is thefirst book to provide a scientifically accurate yet readable account of these topical diseases.

DIVThe story of the revolutionary science that is unraveling the mysteries of mad cow and other fatal brain diseases/div

Human Prion Diseases, Volume 153 is designed to update the reader on the latest advances and clinical aspects of prion diseases. The book is organized into five sections, including the pathophysiology of prions and a description of animal and human diseases. This is followed by detailed reports on recent advances in diagnosis strategies for the development of novel anti-prion molecules and possible designs of clinical trials in such a rare disease. An introductory chapter gives an extensive historical background of prion research, with a final chapter highlighting recent progress, and more importantly, unsolved problems. - Offers an authoritative overview of prion diseases in humans, detailing the pathogenesis of the disease, clinical investigations, and the diagnosis of both the genetic and acquired forms - Provides clarity and context by presenting prion diseases in relation to other neurodegenerative diseases in humans - Emphasizes the unique properties of prion diseases and consequent problems they can cause, both clinically and in public health terms

Results from the National Research Council's (NRC) landmark study Diet and health are readily accessible to nonscientists in this friendly, easy-to-read guide. Readers will find the heart of the book in the first chapter: the Food and Nutrition Board's nine-point dietary plan to reduce the risk of diet-related chronic illness. The nine points are presented as sensible guidelines that are easy to follow on a daily basis, without complicated measuring or calculatingâ€"and without sacrificing favorite foods. Eat for Life gives practical recommendations on foods to eat and in a "how-to" section provides tips on shopping (how to read food labels), cooking (how to turn a high-fat dish into a low-fat one), and eating out (how to read a menu with nutrition in mind). The volume explains what protein, fiber, cholesterol, and fats are and what foods contain them, and tells readers how to reduce their risk of chronic disease by modifying the types of food they eat. Each chronic disease is clearly defined, with information provided on its prevalence in the United States. Written for everyone concerned about how they can influence their health by what they eat, Eat for Life offers potentially lifesaving information in an understandable and persuasive way. Alternative Selection, Quality Paperback Book Club

This book presents a survey of recent developments in protein biochemistry. Top researchers in the field of protein biochemistry describe modern methods to address the challenges of protein purification by three-phase partitioning, and their folding and degradation by the functions of chaperones. The significance of peptide purity for fibril formation is addressed as well as the use of target oriented peptide arrays in palliative approaches in mucoviszidose. The design and application of protein epitope mimetics just as the structural resolving of the misfolding of various mutant proteins in serpinopathies enlarge our tools in resolving pathophysiological imbalances.

In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new Afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest U.S. and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

Prion-related diseases, known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), are infectious, fatal neurodegenerative disorders for which there is no cure, treatment, nor even a means for early diagnosis. The horrific advent of Mad Cow Disease -- transmitted to humans through eating meat from steers sickened by bovine spongiform encephalopathy

For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass. What these strange conditions–including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease–share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes go wrong, resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA–and the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world. In The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion’s hidden past and deadly future. Through exclusive interviews and original archival research, Max explains this story’s connection to human greed and ambition–from the Prussian chemist Justus von Liebig, who made cattle meatier by feeding them the flesh of other cows, to New Guinean natives whose custom of eating the brains of the dead nearly wiped them out. The biologists who have investigated these afflictions are just as extraordinary–for example, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, a self-described “pedagogic pedophiliac pediatrician” who cracked kuru and won the Nobel Prize, and another Nobel winner, Stanley Prusiner, a driven, feared self-promoter who identified the key protein that revolutionized prion study. With remarkable precision, grace, and sympathy, Max–who himself suffers from an inherited neurological illness–explores maladies that have tormented humanity for centuries and gives reason to hope that someday cures will be found. And he eloquently demonstrates that in our relationship to nature and these ailments, we have been our own worst enemy.

The author, a 1997 recipient of the Noble Prize in medicine, describes the years he spent researching and demonstrating how the infectious proteins known as prions were responsible for brain diseases and how his theory has now become widely accepted in the science establishment.