ArticlePLoS pathogens2007
Oral transmissibility of prion disease is enhanced by binding to soil particles.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 119 papers.
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Who cites it
119 citing papers in PubMed, 235 citations in OpenAlex.
- Digging into Soil: Effects of Soil Texture on RT-QuIC Performance for Environmental Prion Surveillance.Environmental science & technology · 2026Article
- Modeling chronic wasting disease transmission risk in mule deer related to habitat characteristics.PloS one · 2026Article
- Detection of chronic wasting disease prions in soil at an illegal white-tailed deer carcass disposal site.Prion · 2025Article
- Review
- White-Tailed Deer Prion Protein Gene Variability Suggests Selection Against Chronic Wasting Disease in Canada's Prairies.Viruses · 2025Article
- Temperature and pH dynamics during carcass decomposition and implications for disease management.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Navigating the nexus: unraveling the impact of sustainability and the circular economy on food safety.Italian journal of food safety · 2025Article
- Prion Partitioning and Persistence in Environmental Waters.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Evaluation of spatial variation in chronic wasting disease risk with Bayesian Poisson log-Gaussian model.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Article
- Characterisation of European Field Goat Prion Isolates in Ovine PrP Overexpressing Transgenic Mice (Tgshp IX) Reveals Distinct Prion Strains.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Detection of Chronic Wasting Disease Prions in Prairie Soils from Endemic Regions.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
- Prion Seeding Activity in Plant Tissues Detected by RT-QuIC.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Chronic Wasting Disease: State of the Science.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Assessing Different Chronic Wasting Disease Training Aids for Use with Detection Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Plants as vectors for environmental prion transmission.iScience · 2023Article
- Article
- Identification of chronic wasting disease prions in decaying tongue tissues from exhumed white-tailed deer.mSphere · 2023Article
- Evaluation of the proper use of medication available over the counter by subsistence and emerging farmers in Mbombela Municipality, South Africa.BMC veterinary research · 2023Article
- Ticks harbor and excrete chronic wasting disease prions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- PMCA for ultrasensitive detection of prions and to study disease biology.Cell and tissue research · 2023Review
59 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Soil may serve as an environmental reservoir for prion infectivity and contribute to the horizontal transmission of prion diseases (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies [TSEs]) of sheep, deer, and elk. TSE infectivity can persist in soil for years, and we previously demonstrated that the disease-associated form of the prion protein binds to soil particles and prions adsorbed to the common soil mineral montmorillonite (Mte) retain infectivity following intracerebral inoculation. Here, we assess the oral infectivity of Mte- and soil-bound prions. We establish that prions bound to Mte are orally bioavailable, and that, unexpectedly, binding to Mte significantly enhances disease penetrance and reduces the incubation period relative to unbound agent. Cox proportional hazards modeling revealed that across the doses of TSE agent tested, Mte increased the effective infectious titer by a factor of 680 relative to unbound agent. Oral exposure to Mte-associated prions led to TSE development in experimental animals even at doses too low to produce clinical symptoms in the absence of the mineral. We tested the oral infectivity of prions bound to three whole soils differing in texture, mineralogy, and organic carbon content and found soil-bound prions to be orally infectious. Two of the three soils increased oral transmission of disease, and the infectivity of agent bound to the third organic carbon-rich soil was equivalent to that of unbound agent. Enhanced transmissibility of soil-bound prions may explain the environmental spread of some TSEs despite the presumably low levels shed into the environment. Association of prions with inorganic microparticles represents a novel means by which their oral transmission is enhanced relative to unbound agent.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.