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Holes in the Matter
A Case of Prion Disease
Tonya Laakko Train
This case centers on a fictional group of young adults who studied abroad together in Scotland as college students. A number of them develop disease symptoms and die a few years after the trip. The cause of death is determined to be a prion disease. Applying information from pre-reading assignments as well as from the case itself, students propose hypotheses as to which prion disease was the most likely cause of death and how it was acquired. In the final section of the case study, students are asked to imagine that this occurred on their campus and write an essay explaining the disease in the case study to a general audience and why they should or should not stay on campus. The case was designed for an upper-division undergraduate course in the biochemical basis of disease and is intended to introduce students to prions and the diseases caused by this infectious protein. It could also be used in undergraduate courses dealing with infectious disease, global health, physiology, or biochemistry.
|Keywords:||Prion; Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease; CJD; Kuru; transmissible spongiform encephalopathy; mad cow disease; infectious disease|
|Educational Level:||Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division|
|Type/Method:||Directed, Discussion, Interrupted|
|Subject Headings:||Cell Biology Epidemiology Molecular Biology Physiology Public Health Biochemistry Biology (General) Medicine (General) Neuroscience|
|Copyright:||Copyright held by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Please see our usage guidelines, which outline our policy concerning permissible reproduction of this work.|
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