Furthermore, Prusiner and colleagues have identified regions on PrP that are the most important for transmission. The implications of Prusiner's discovery lie far beyond a few obscure diseases of the central nervous system. Scientists have long been perplexed by Alzheimer's disease, the most common brain disorder leading to dementia in the elderly. They noticed re markable similarities between CJD and Alzheimer's. Both are neurodegenerative diseases that cause progressive memory loss.
Neurons die, leaving behind protein plaques as tell-tale signs of a silent culprit.
Although the composition of Alzheimer's plaque i s different from the prion protein, the similarities may not be coincidental. The study of prions opens up a whole new arena in which the hunt for the causes of these debilitating ailments can continue. Some autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system for unknown reasons reacts against the body's own tissues, could potentially be another example of how altered protein conformation can lead to disease. If a protein alters its conformation, much like a prion does, so that the immune system mistakes it as foreign, autoimmunity would arise. Every time a paradigm shift is made there are bound to be skeptics.