New type of mad cow disease found

Italian scientists have discovered a new strain of prion in the brains of some cows with mad cow disease.

The researchers looked at brain matter from eight cows that had tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). In two of the cows, they found a different type of prion that, at the molecular level, resembles the prion in a subtype of the sporadic form of the always-deadly human illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The researchers speculate it could be a sporadic form of mad cow disease. It's unknown whether this new type of mad cow disease could have spread to humans.

The paper will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.