Medical Hypotheses
Volume 54, Issue 1 , Pages 69-71, January 2000

Prion diseases: a typical Kuhnian abnormality in a molecular paradigm

Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Federico II University, via S. Pansini 5, Naples, 80132, Italy

Received 4 February 1998; accepted 16 November 1998.

Revised

Abstract 

As a new class of pathogens with unusual properties, prions have been implied in several spongiform encephalopathies mainly affecting farm animals (scrapie, mad-cow disease) and humans (kuru, Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease, fatal familial insomnia) (1). The term prions underlines the feature that the agents would merely consist of a protein (2), perhaps a pathological counterpart of a cellular constituent with poorly defined functions (3–5). In reviewing relevant literature, in order to test the validity of the ‘protein-only hypothesis’ for coherence and consistency with a molecular paradigm, we have met evident discrepancies, making prion diseases a typical abnormality in a Kuhnian sense. This paper summarizes and analyses the main features of the protein-only model.

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PII: S0306-9877(98)90837-4

doi:10.1054/mehy.1998.0837

Medical Hypotheses
Volume 54, Issue 1 , Pages 69-71, January 2000

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