Contagious: Prion diseases
| About contagion: Contagion and contagiousness refers to how easily the spread of Prion diseases is possible from one person to another. Other words for contagion include "infection", "infectiousness", "transmission" or "transmissability". Contagiousness has nothing to do with genetics or inheriting diseases from parents. For an overview of contagion, see Introduction to Contagion. |
Contagiousness of Prion diseases: Prions are not highly contagious. They are infective via injection of contaminated products, but not by air or touch. In other words, they are transmitted only via body fluids that contain the protein from within the blood or more commonly fluids from the infected brain. For example, CJD has also been transmitted by mistakes in brain surgery and health procedures, especially brain surgery. Prusiner 1 mentions that human CJD has been transmitted by "corneal transplantation, implantation of dura matter or electrodes in the brain, use of contaminated surgical instruments, and injection of growth hormone derived from human pituitaries (before recombinant growth hormone became available)".
Contagiousness properties of Prion diseases:
Contagious from organ transplant?: Yes, rarely from a corneal transplant
Footnotes:
1. http://www.sciam.com/0896issue/prion.html
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