Cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a rare brain illness, may be caused by prions

A PAPER PUBLISHED in this month's Annals of Neurology, by Gargi Banerjee and David Werring of University College, London, adds to evidence that prion diseases are more widespread and varied than had been realised. Such diseases are caused by misfolded protein molecules that have the unfortunate property of triggering similar misfolding in others of their kind, and so transmitting their pathological character to previously healthy molecules. They came to public attention in the 1990s, when a vari...