What are the infectious agents of mad cow disease?

Answer 1

No, mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is caused by a faulty (misfolded) protein called a prion, which can carry the disease between individuals.

For example: humans get it from eating infected tissue, receiving infected blood transfusions or it can also be genetic.

Answer 2

The short answer is that it is transmissible through feed, but not infectious.

Mad cow disease is the newspaper name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). BSE is caused by a misfolded protein in the brain of infected cattle and can be transmitted from one cow to another cow if the diseased cow is used for feed given to the second cow. However, the mechanism of this transmission has been strictly prohibited, so this infectious BSE prion appears to be virtually eradicated from the world.

There is a second type of BSE prion that arises spontaneously in older cattle; this form does not appear to be infectious but animal health experts and federal governments treat it like it could be infectious due to an abundance of caution.

Answer 3

No, Mad Cow Disease is caused by a mutated protein that goes around transforming other healthy proteins into the malformed one. These newly misshapen proteins then go and deform more proteins. This cycle continues until there is so much damage that the body is no longer able to function. This disease targets the nervous system, it causes infected cows to react irrationally and impulsively hence: MAD COW disease.

This disease eventually kills the cow when there is not enough nervous system infrastructure left to maintain the cow's bodily functions. Because this disease is transferable to humans and because it is nearly undetectable due to its small size and because it has no cure due to the fact it is so hard to tell the healthy proteins from the malformed ones, mad cow disease is even more dangerous than a virus.

Answer 4

People do not get Mad Cow Disease. The disease in people that has been associated with humans is called variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD) that is also a progressive fatal neurological disease.

Answer 5

Mad Cow disease isn't contagious, because it can't be spread easily by physical contact. It is however infectious, meaning it can be given from one individual to another. People can contract it if they eat the neural tissue (brain and spinal cord) of an infected cow. Other cows catch mad cow disease the same way. You can't catch mad cow disease by touching an infected cow or it sneezing/bleeding etc. on you.

Answer 6

NO. Mad Cow stems from a mis-folded protein called a prion. That's why the disease is so hard to detect and impossible to cure. Antibiotics are useless against this disease. However, antibiotics would not be useless if this disease was bacterial.

Answer 7

Sort of. The most likely way that a person can catch the human form of BSE (called Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD) is by eating the brain and spinal cord of the infected animal. Meat can also be infected if contaminated by tissues of the brain and spinal cord.

Answer 8

Infectious. But it's only infectious if it has a source that it can become infectious, like if an infected cow gets put into the animal and human food chain.