written<\/a> about in the CDC\u2019s journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. It involved a woman who, in 1971, when she was just seven years old, received cadaveric human growth hormone. She received this treatment to address a growth hormone deficiency, and it lasted for over nine years. Unfortunately, that treatment was infected with prions.<\/p>\n![\"Brain](\"https:\/\/twistedsifter.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load-0.7\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" "\\"Woman")
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The prions remained in her body for nearly 50 years before \u2018waking up\u2019 in the woman\u2019s brain, resulting in rapid and debilitating neurological problems. The 58-year-old woman had the prion disease known as iatrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (iCJD). She sought medical attention because of a sudden onset of tremors and trouble walking. Within just a few weeks, she was no longer able to control her bladder and she experienced slurred speech. Next, she developed extreme startle reflexes, rigid limbs, and rapid breathing. Finally, she became unconscious and required a ventilator. She never woke up.<\/p>\n
Prions can get into one\u2019s system through contaminated injections, which is what happened to this poor woman. More often, however, a human is infected by eating brain tissue of an animal that has some type of prion disease. One common example of this is the white tail deer, which can get chronic wasting disease, which is caused by prions. Deer can pass it on to other deer by urinating on vegetation that other deer then eat.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to directly eat the brain tissue to get the disease either. When the deer is being processed, for example, some brain tissue could fall onto other meat, which is then eaten. Since the prions don\u2019t die off with normal cooking, anyone eating that meat is at risk.\u00a0Another prion disease that most people have heard of is Mad Cow Disease.<\/p>\n
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Taking care to avoid contact with any potentially prion-infected foods, medicines, or other things is essential for ensuring one does not become exposed.<\/p>\n
It is a serious threat that medical professionals are constantly on the look out for because of how dangerous it can be.<\/p>\n
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a quantum computer simulation that has \u201creversed time\u201d and physics may never be the same.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shutterstock The world is a dangerous place, and for humans, some of the most dangerous things are so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,18103,18104,18105,137,500,18106,18107,18108,128,7969,4048],"class_list":["post-16897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chronic-wasting-disease","tag-creutzfeldt-jakob-disease","tag-deadly-infections","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-mad-cow-disease","tag-medical-care","tag-prions","tag-science","tag-single-topic","tag-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}