Click to Translate to English Click to Translate to French  Click to Translate to Spanish  Click to Translate to German  Click to Translate to Italian  Click to Translate to Japanese  Click to Translate to Chinese Simplified  Click to Translate to Korean  Click to Translate to Arabic  Click to Translate to Russian  Click to Translate to Portuguese  Click to Translate to Myanmar (Burmese)

PANDEMIC ALERT LEVEL
123456
Forum Home Forum Home > Main Forums > Latest News
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Camel Prion Disease: Algeria
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Now tracking the new emerging South Africa Omicron Variant

Camel Prion Disease: Algeria

 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
Message
Technophobe View Drop Down
Assistant Admin
Assistant Admin
Avatar

Joined: January 16 2014
Location: Scotland
Status: Offline
Points: 88450
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Camel Prion Disease: Algeria
    Posted: April 15 2018 at 3:41am

‘Camel Prion Disease’ discovered in dromedaries in Algeria: Study

April 14, 2018
2027 views

A new prion disease has been discovered in dromedaries in the Ouargla region of Algeria. The study is the result of an international collaboration conducted by a team of researchers from the Department of Food Safety, Nutrition and Veterinary Public Health of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and the Universities of Tlemcen and Ouargla. The research was published in the journal Emerging Infectious Disease .

Image/mariefranceImage/mariefrance

Prion diseases are neurodegenerative diseases with a fatal course affecting both humans and animals. The Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease of man and the scrapie of sheep and goats are the diseases known for a long time. To these it was added in the ’80s the bovine spongiform encepalopathy, the so-called “mad cow” that, in 2001 – following the demonstration of its transmissibility to humans – caused one of the most serious food crises that have ever been recorded globally.

The neurological symptoms observed in the dromedaries, reminiscent of those of the “mad cow”, have made the Algerian researchers suspect that it could be a prion disease. The laboratory investigations conducted by the group of researchers of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità confirmed the suspicion. The new disease has been called Camel Prion Disease . The relatively high frequency of the disease and the involvement of the lymphoreticular system suggest that it is a transmissible disease among the animals and widespread in the region. Further investigations will be necessary to verify the possible spread of this disease in other areas of Algeria and in other countries.

“The discovery of a new prion disease in an animal species of economic interest and food in large areas of the planet – says Gabriele Vaccari , head of the Emerging Zoonosis Operations Unit of the ISS – raises important questions of public health and food safety. The breeding of dromedaries is widespread throughout North and Central Africa, as well as in the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and is an important component in the economy of many populations. In many areas dromedaries are used for the production of milk and meat for human consumption “.

The results of the investigations conducted so far suggest that the dromedary disease is different from bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the only animal prion disease demonstrated to date that can be transmitted to humans, with over 200 deaths in various parts of the world. However, the risk to humans is currently unknown and further investigation is needed to clarify its zoonotic potential.

The recent update by the World Health Organization of the list of infectious diseases at risk of epidemic has included many diseases of zoonotic origin, demonstrating the importance of these diseases and the attention that must be paid, even with respect to the potential risk for man, discovering a new animal disease.

Beyond the implications of animal health and public health, the discovery of a new prion disease has an indisputable scientific interest for the peculiarity of the agents responsible for this group of diseases and because the pathogenetic model of prion diseases has recently found wide and promising areas of application to human diseases of great interest such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.



Source:  http://outbreaknewstoday.com/camel-prion-disease-discovered-dromedaries-algeria-study-84046/

How do you tell if a politician is lying?
His lips or pen are moving.
Back to Top
Technophobe View Drop Down
Assistant Admin
Assistant Admin
Avatar

Joined: January 16 2014
Location: Scotland
Status: Offline
Points: 88450
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 19 2018 at 2:35am

'Mad camel' disease? New prion infection causes alarm

Apr 18, 2018

Italian and Algerian researchers released new evidence of prion disease in three dromedary camels found in an Algerian slaughterhouse, according to a new study in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The discovery, now being called camel prion disease (CPD), has raised more questions than answers about this deadly illness characterized by misfolded brain proteins.

"These camels are quite intriguing," prion expert Valerie Sim, MD, associate professor at the University of Alberta, told CIDRAP News. "If we know anything about prions it's that they can they can cross species; it's not easy to do, but they can. So it's very concerning if you have any infected animals in the food supply chain."

Sim was not involved in the new study.

In prion disease, the normal shape of a protein is contorted, and that triggers a domino-like effect in neighboring proteins, leading to fatal and severe neurodegenerative disease. Prion diseases can affect both humans and animals, and though inter-species transmission is rare, it can happen, as it did most famously during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow") epidemic, which started in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom.

In both humans and animals, the diseases can happen spontaneously, or they can be inherited from a genetic mutation or, rarely, transmitted when a person eats the meat of an infected animal. The last category, infectious prion disease, is the most concerning for researchers working on the human-animal interface.

New threat in animals

"Is there a clear exposure risk in camels? That's what's needed to be understood," said Sim. She said that the presence of prions in the camels' lymph tissues suggests the disease was acquired and not spontaneous, likely from something the animal was digesting.

In the Emerging Infectious Diseases study, researchers describe CPD in three symptomatic camels from a Saharan population in southeastern Algeria, where the animals were brought for slaughter to the Ouargla abattoir in 2015 and 2016. Dromedary camels are commonly slaughtered and consumed in many parts of North Africa and the Middle East.

Breeders bringing the camels to slaughter noted several neurologic symptoms from 2010 to 2015 in about 3% of their animals, including "weight loss; behavioral abnormalities; and neurologic signs, such as tremors, aggressiveness, hyperreactivity, typical down and upward movements of the head, hesitant and uncertain gait, ataxia of the hind limbs, occasional falls, and difficultly getting up." Anecdotal evidence collected from employees at the slaughterhouse suggests that these symptoms have been present since the 1980s.

The researchers, from Algeria and Rome, took brain samples as well as samples from the cervical, prescapular, and lumbar aortic lymph nodes from three symptomatic and one healthy camel. They confirmed the diagnosis by the presence of disease-specific prion protein in brain tissues from the symptomatic animals. The authors said the presence of prions in the lymph nodes suggests infection, but the disease remains a mystery.

Disease origin unknown

"The origin of CPD is unknown. It might be a disease unique to dromedaries or a malady deriving from transmission of a prion disease from another species," the authors concluded. They noted, however, that BSE from imported meat in the late 1980s cannot be ruled out.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, publisher of CIDRAP News, said the study was noteworthy especially as it comes on the heels of new information from Canadian researchers that showed that chronic wasting disease—another prion disease—in deer and their relatives can be transmitted to non-human primates fed meat from infected animals.

"The whole issue of prions and meat consumption is a new and much more serious topic we need to look at," Osterholm said. "Even though there's no evidence that there is transmission [from camels], the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

See also:

Apr 16 Emerg Infect Dis study

Soirce:   http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/04/mad-camel-disease-new-prion-infection-causes-alarm


How do you tell if a politician is lying?
His lips or pen are moving.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down