[thelastgallon]

Thank you for the context.

> some are transmitted, typically by eating some part of an animal that contains prions, which then end up in your own body, inducing proteins in your body to take on prion configurations.

I wonder about this part. I thought consumed protein gets broken down into amino acids and new proteins are created later. Do prion proteins bypass this step?

[pash]

From what I understand, which is very incomplete, the leading hypothesis at the moment is that ingested prions are a bit hard to digest (because they’re malformed proteins), so they end up making it out of the gastrointestinal tract somehow, interacting with the nervous system via the intestinal lining or lymphatic system. Then they travel to the brain via nervous pathways, by-passing the usual blood–brain barrier.

But transmission of prions by ingestion is thought to be quite rare, as that mechanism suggests. Transmission by any means seems to be quite rare, even heritable transmission (e.g., vCJD). So that’s why it seems unlikely that whatever is happening in New Brunswick is CVD.

But if it’s not some minor mass hysteria, then maybe prions.