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Pellagra
Published in Charles Theisler, Adjuvant Medical Care, 2023
The lack of vitamin B3, or niacin, in the body causes a disease known as pellagra. The term pellagra means “rough skin.” Like all B vitamins, niacin plays a role in converting carbohydrates into glucose, metabolizing fats and proteins, and keeping the nervous system working properly.1 Pellagra is a chronic wasting disease rarely found in developed countries. It can occur when the intake of both niacin and tryptophan are low. Pellagra is known as the four D disease: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and eventually, if untreated, death.
Infectious Diseases
Published in Lyle D. Broemeling, Bayesian Analysis of Infectious Diseases, 2021
Francovich [5] who writes for the Spokesman Review in Spokane, Washington, had an interesting article appearing in the Sunday May 3rd edition. He reports the following. “Imagine walking through a market teeming with humans and nonhuman animals: monkeys, pigs, bats pangolins, beavers, rats, deer, and other creatures unknown and unappetizing to most Americans. Smashed into this small area, half-a-million square feet-slightly more than 10 acres, is a dizzying kaleidoscope of species. There are animals that under more natural circumstances would rarely, if any, interact. You are perusing, like all other humans filtering in and out. Everything is for sale and you are looking for food, fulfilling an evolutionary imperative that provides rhythm to our days. “The article continues by describing the virus interacting between humans and animals. For example, the malaria virus between mosquitos and humans. Consider the wet markets found in China and other countries in Asia. It is in these kind of places that investigators believe SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19 make the jump from bats to pangolins (Asian and African mammals) before transforming to humans. Another example is chronic wasting disease, CWD, which is a neurological malady that kills deer and elk. The infected animal stumble, drool, shed weight, and also lose their fear of people, then die. The disease is now in 26 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. Although there is no evidence that it has passed to humans, there is always the possibility. For additional information, the reader is referred to the Francovich article in the Spokesman Review.
A Treatise on the Role of Herpesvirus in Neurodegeneration
Published in Abhai Kumar, Debasis Bagchi, Antioxidants and Functional Foods for Neurodegenerative Disorders, 2021
Bernard W. Downs, Manashi Bagchi, Bruce S. Morrison, Jeffrey Galvin, Steve Kushner, Debasis Bagchi, Kenneth Blum
Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, are a group of rare, fatal brain diseases that affect animals and humans. They are thought to be caused by an infectious agent known as a prion, which is derived from a misfolded version of a normal host protein known as prion protein. Prion diseases include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow” disease) in cattle, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) and variant CJD in humans, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease in deer, elk, moose, and reindeer. Something more of the pathological events needs to be understood about the bio-environment in which these misfolded proteins occur.
Tackling prion diseases: a review of the patent landscape
Published in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, 2021
Marco Zattoni, Giuseppe Legname
Human prion diseases are etiologically divided into idiopathic, genetic, and acquired. Among the idiopathic forms, which accounts for the majority of prion diseases cases, there are sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) and variably protease-sensitive prionopathy. Genetic prion diseases, such as, fatal familial insomnia, genetic CJD and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome are characterized by autosomal dominant mutations in human PRNP gene. The acquired forms are very rare and account for ritual cannibalism, as Kuru, contamination through surgical instruments, as in the case of iatrogenic CJD, or consumption of animal products contaminated with the agent responsible for the bovine spongiform encephalopathies (BSE) [7]. The BSE epidemic, often referred to as ‘mad cow disease,’ has attracted the attention of the public health authorities and the scientific community since it was shown to cause a new variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans [8,9]. Besides BSE, other prion diseases discovered in animals include scrapie in sheep and goats and chronic wasting diseases (CWD) in cervids, for which no transmission to humans has been shown so far, although their potential risk cannot be dismissed [10,11]
Recent advances in cellular models for discovering prion disease therapeutics
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2022
Lea Nikolić, Chiara Ferracin, Giuseppe Legname
Giri and colleagues were the first to successfully infect neurospheres with prions [86]. They showed that undifferentiated neurospheres obtained from both embryonic FVB mice and PrPC– overexpressing mice (Tg4053) can propagate PrPSc. Prion replication in neurospheres depended on the level of PrPC; indeed, FVB neurospheres took longer to get infected with prions than Tg4053. Nevertheless, after 4 days of incubation with RML strain, PrPSc was detectable and continued to accumulate until 36 days after exposure. Moreover, culture-produced prions were transmissible and induced pathological phenotypes when inoculated in mice. In a study by Herva and colleagues, prion infection, using different prion strains, was tested in neurospheres from 129/ola, FVB, Tga20, and Prnp0/0 mice [87]. Surprisingly, only differentiated neurospheres replicated prions, a result different from the one obtained by Giri and colleagues. This discrepancy can be explained by the high heterogeneity typical of this model. This heterogeneity arises from the use of different technical procedures and diverse inocula. Other studies also confirmed that neurospheres generated from mice, with different genetic backgrounds and with different PrPC expression levels, can be infected by several different prion strains (RML, 22 L, mouse-adapted scrapie BSE, and GSS) [87,88]. Moreover, differentiated neurospheres, derived from cervid-PrP expressing mice, were shown to propagate non-adapted chronic wasting disease prions from white-tailed deer and elk [89]. Neurospheres are, therefore, infectable with a wide array of prions of different strains and species.
Could Immunonutrition Help in the Fight against COVID-19 in Cancer Patient?
Published in Nutrition and Cancer, 2022
Gang Tang, Linyu Zhang, Wang Huang, Zhengqiang Wei
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei province in December 2019 and quickly caused an unprecedented pandemic globally (1). The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of worldwide concern in January 2020, and subsequently named the disease 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 (2). Common clinical manifestations of COVID-19 are fever, cough, headache, sore throat, dyspnea, anosmia, muscle pain, diarrhea, and deafness (3). As of 2 January, 2021, 82,579,768 confirmed cases and 1,818,849 deaths from COVID-19 were reported globally (4). Due to the rapid spread of the epidemic, global health services are facing severe challenges. The immune system plays an important role in protecting the body from infection by viruses, fungi, bacteria and parasites (5, 6). Therefore, a weakened immune system often increases the risk of pathogen infection (7). Cancer is a global public health burden and the second leading cause of death, accounting for more than nine million deaths worldwide in 2018 (8). Cancer is a chronic wasting disease, often accompanied by malnutrition and side effects associated with cancer treatment, and their immune systems are often suppressed (9). Several studies have shown that people with cancer may be more susceptible to COVID-19 than people without cancer (9–12). In addition, the prognosis is poor among COVID-19 patients with cancer, and complications such as renal insufficiency, liver injury, multiple organ dysfunction disorder, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis, and myocardial injury are more common among them. Kidney failure and multiple organ failure are more likely to occur, especially in hematologic tumors (9, 11–14)