What is a slow virus?

A slow virus becomes an outdated term for what is often called prion disease. The basic concept is that the infectious agent enters the body, but does not manifest in the first place. Instead, months or years may pass before a slow virus occurs, and its formation may be tragic and difficult, because many of these types of diseases cannot be cured and degeneration and death. Examples of prion disease and slow virus include Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow) and Creutzfield-Jacob Claly.

The reason why a slow virus is now referred to as prion disease is caused by theories about how these diseases go through. These are not typical viruses, but are usually caused by accumulation of the body of very small cells called prions. Prions do not produce as normal viruses because they lack DNA. Instead, it is assumed that they are replicated by converting normal prions found in the brain into abnormal, which are not regularly built.

Slow virus is Also demanding becauseE is difficult to say until there are symptoms that someone is sick. People do not have immune responses to prions, so in the early stages of "infection" it seems that it is absolutely good and it seems that blood testing confirms it. Years may have passed before abnormal prions accumulate to the extent that symptoms occur.

In conditions such as crazy cow disease, cows tend to become ill by eating meat in food, which is contaminated with these viral prions. In fact, the development of symptoms of crazy cows such as blindness and possible death can move quickly to what is considered a slow virus. However, symptoms may still not be present when cows are killed and the disease can be handed over to people who enjoy meat from sick cows.

Sometimes the prion disease has a inherited aspect. People can inherit, probably from someone who has abnormal prions, prion 'with the ability to behave abnoRmally and convert healthy prions to those that can constantly accumulate. Creutzfield-Jacob's disease is expected to be inherited in this way. As with Mad Cow, Creutzfield-Jacob is devastating and causes conditions such as dementia, memory loss, speech loss, movement challenge and eventually death. There is no treatment yet that can adequately reverse the progress of this slow virus, even if one is actively sought after.

From time to time, the term slow virus can be used to express a viral dormance that may occur in other viruses that live in the body. Chickenpox virus can remain in the body sleeping for five or six decades and then rediscover as shingles in older adults. It is believed that the expression of mononucleosis is not always instant or that the initial exposure to some Herpes simplex viruses does not always lead to immediate symptoms of infection. More often, however, a slow virus now refers to infection by abnormal prions, which results in serious but slowly in progressAfaled disease.