Amyloidosis

One of the most existentially frightening illnesses ever to be discovered was mad cow disease, a fatal prion-spread illness that appeared in animals in the 1980s and killed over 200 people during the height of the outbreak in the late 1990s. You don’t hear much about mad cow today, but the threat still looms. Here’s what happened to this nightmare germ.Dave Bautista Opens Up About His Relationship With Denis VilleneuveIn 1986, farmers in the UK began to report strange behavior among some of their cows. The affected…

A medical treatment given to children in the UK may have led to some developing Alzheimer’s disease decades later, new research out Monday suggests. The study presents evidence that at least five people contracted the neurodegenerative disorder from having received human growth hormones contaminated with rogue amyloid beta protein. The authors point out that Alzheimer’s cannot be caught person-to-person through conventional means, however, and this specific infection risk no longer exists today.Alex Winter on the Most…

Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)A case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy—more colorfully known as mad cow disease—has been detected on a farm in the Netherlands. It’s the first time that an infected cow has been reported in the country in over a decade. Authorities say the cow should not pose a threat to human health, but they’re looking for other animals that may have been infected by the cow or from the samesource.Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is a type of prion disease found in cows. Prions are the…