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?
2.
Why is it important to note the lack of growth hormone treatment or tissue grafts?
3.
Should the patients have been placed in isolation? Why / why not?
4.
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.
5.
There are other prion diseases. What are they?
6.
The prion diseases involve a very unusual infective agent. Why is it unusual?
7.
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?
8.
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 the sheet and hand in your answers during your first tutorial.
How did you do on this? At the end of the session, give yourself a score out of 10. Write a couple of words
on what you could do better.