Pre-Arrival Task

Your Name:

Pre-arrival Task

Your first tutorial will be held during Intro Week, either on Monday at 13.30 or Thursday at 15.30 depending on your tutorial group (you will be informed of this either before arrival via the BMS website or on Monday afternoon at the departmental advice session). Part of the tutorial will involve discussion of the following task and you are therefore asked to prepare to discuss your answers at this meeting. This work will not contribute to your degree marks, but is formative (i.e. helps to develop or ‘form’ your learning).

Background

It is 1996 and a cohort of patients in the UK have been presenting with similar symptoms including depression, cognitive impairment, rapidly progressive dementia, spontaneous muscle contractions, and visual, speech, gait and abnormalities. Towards the end, patients cease to respond to exterior stimuli - the disease span is approximately 18 months from onset to the death of the patient. All cases involve young people (16 -39).

Post-mortem analysis of sections of the brains of affected individuals shows abnormal holes or cavities in the tissue giving it a spongy appearance. Biochemical investigations indicate that this condition is a transmissible prion disease.None of the patients had received growth hormone or dura mater grafts.

Questions for you to consider.

Don’t use Google for this, try something more professional – look for the PubMed site and see what it can do. Write your answers to the following questions in the spaces provided. Your answers will be collected during the first tutorial.

1. Which disease is this?

1. Why is it important to note the lack of growth hormone treatment or tissue grafts?

1. Should the patients have been placed in isolation? Why / why not?

1. Imagine yourself as a researcher at that time. What do you need to do to prove that this disease is caused by the ingestion of contaminated meat? Remember – get this wrong and you could inflict catastrophic damage on the UK farming industry, and the people that work therein.

1. There are other prion diseases. What are they?

1. The prion diseases involve a very unusual infective agent. Why is it unusual?

1. Part of the evidence that showed the route of transmission of the disease to humans involved using macaque monkeys. Is it ethical to use primates in this way?

1. Given the major drive to eliminate the problem since the mid 1990’s are we sure that there will be no more cases?

Please remember to write your name on thesheet and hand in your answers during your first tutorial.