The scientific name of "mad cow disease" is bovine spongiform encephalopathy. This disease will damage the brain and spinal cord of cattle and can cause many subtle cavities in the brain of cattle. Due to the damage of nervous system, sick cattle will have some abnormal behavior. Some sick cattle are very aggressive. They rush around like crazy. The name "mad cow disease" comes from this.
The terrible thing about mad cow disease is that it can not only make cattle crazy, but also infect humans. The "mad cow disease" infected by people is called the new Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. It is mainly manifested in the gradual deterioration of intelligence and memory, and will eventually develop into dementia. When a group of patients with the new Creutzfeldt Jakob disease first appeared in Britain, people did not associate the disease with mad cow disease in cattle. But the investigation of human patients shows that they have all eaten beef that may have mad cow disease. Scientists speculate that the new disease may be caused by eating diseased beef.
The culprit of the new Creutzfeldt Jakob disease is "prion", also known as "prion". The word "prion" embodies an important feature of this virus - it does not carry genetic material such as DNA, but is composed of proteins. In the past, people believed that the simplest organism that nature can replicate and spread itself is virus, and if the virus wants to replicate and spread, it must at least have DNA or RNA to carry genetic information. But prion itself does not have the structure of nucleic acid, but it can also replicate and spread itself. The discovery of prions has greatly overturned people's understanding of life.
Prion itself does not carry genetic material, so how does it achieve self replication? In fact, "prion" is a normal protein in animals. Under normal circumstances, this kind of protein plays an important role in the nervous system. However, due to some unknown reasons, their configuration has changed, which makes the protein lose its original normal function. What's more terrible is that they can also catalyze the configuration change of other proteins and turn them into "prions". This is the mechanism of self replication of "prions". As long as a small amount of "prions" can catalyze the structural changes of proteins in the nervous system of human or cattle, produce more "prions", and gradually destroy the whole nervous system of the infected person.
Although mad cow disease is terrible, since it was discovered by scientists, it has been paid close attention by countries all over the world. Both sick cattle and patients have been treated carefully, and the epidemic has been controlled at a relatively low level. After entering the 21st century, there are only sporadic reports of the disease worldwide, so the public does not need to be particularly worried about suffering from the disease. Unless you receive a warning from the local health department, it is absolutely unnecessary to skip eating beef because you are worried about "mad cow disease".