Marek's disease and humans

[redranger209]

I'm going to stop reading now. Thank you for making sure that I don't sleep tonight. [/QUOTE]

Back in the 90’s it was suspected that MS (multiple sclerosis) was caused by seabirds because of the high instance of MS along a particular coastline, and it was theoretically linked with Marek’s disease. This has since been disproved.

In an earlier report (2001), Marek’s was found in a percent of human serum samples but it caused no issues (it is a host specific virus). There was also no difference in samples taken between chicken farmers vs. office workers (exposure doesn’t matter).

In another study (2003), absolutely no traces of Marek’s could be found in exposed human plasma, despite being able to consistently find and diagnose it in the plasma of exposed chickens.
I did not read through the procedures of every study, but that’s what I summarized.

ok, thanks for the clarity.

 

[007Sean]

Excuse me if this study has already been posted here but it seems to verify that it has a less than 1% chance of being infectious to humans.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=.../6/2428.full&usg=AOvVaw1NIQwyFpUQnH_Ch9pFvegn

 

[Tesumph]

I want to catch up on all of these articles but I have to put it on pause for the night.

So is it possible that these workers who were infected were distributing the vaccine, thus, being exposed to a live strain able to infect humans via this vaccine?

No, there was no difference in the types of people found with Mareks in their blood’s serum. It was found in men, women, young and old, chicken farmers, and office workers never exposed to chickens.

Keep in mind it has never been found in human plasma, which I believe is how it is diagnosed in an infected chicken.

 

[redranger209]

I'm going to stop reading now. Thank you for making sure that I don't sleep tonight.

ok, thanks for the clarity.[/QUOTE]
Crap! First time in months I forgot a capital on byc.

 

[redranger209]

ok, thanks for the clarity.

Crap! First time in months I forgot a capital on byc.[/QUOTE]
Aaaand byc glitched so it quoted wrong.

 

[Akrnaf2]

So it infects humans, but doesn’t affect them? Like blackhead with chickens? All of those .gov pages are confusing as heck.

One of the principles that activate the immune system is the ability to distinguish between self-antigens and foreign antigens. Any foreign antigen that enters the body of a healthy person will stimulate the immune system to respond, producing antibodies among other things. The immune response does not depend on whether the antigen is dangerous and capable of causing the disease or not. For example injecting cow's milk into a person's blood will trigger an immune response even though it is not harmful at all. And this is the situation in my opinion with the MDV, People are exposed to the virus and respond to it in an immune response, although it is harmless to them.

 

[micstrachan]

I want to read these articles, but I’m falling asleep! I hope this thread keeps going so I remember to read!

 

[dotporter]

Alignment of MDV-gD sequences ampliÆed from avian
and human sera demonstrated very weak divergence (between 0 and 1± 6 % divergence at the nucleotide level). This indicates that MDV genomes present in humans are not distinct from those found in chickens

http://www.microbiologyresearch.org...est&checksum=30D770AF4A5ACC6688429AF6BFA4C52A

MDV has been found in human blood plasma. However, most studies use a method of detection which is inferior. It really doesn't seem to matter, since MDV hasn't shown any sign of being problematic for humans, despite being studied as a possible cause of cancer and MS.

 

[Tesumph]

Alignment of MDV-gD sequences ampliÆed from avian
and human sera demonstrated very weak divergence (between 0 and 1± 6 % divergence at the nucleotide level). This indicates that MDV genomes present in humans are not distinct from those found in chickens

http://www.microbiologyresearch.org...est&checksum=30D770AF4A5ACC6688429AF6BFA4C52A

MDV has been found in human blood plasma. However, most studies use a method of detection which is inferior. It really doesn't seem to matter, since MDV hasn't shown any sign of being problematic for humans, despite being studied as a possible cause of cancer and MS.

In that study it was found in human serum, not plasma. I don’t know if that altered the study but they are a little different, which I why I clarified earlier.
I agree that it isn’t a cause for concern.

 

[rebrascora]

I'm trying to follow the scientific terminology of these papers and where they are leading and this very interesting discussion.
I'm struggling to understand the relevance of it being found in sera but not plasma. From my short bit of research to educate myself, sera is just plasma minus the clotting agents.....correct me if I got that wrong guys, but if I am right, what difference does it make? It seems there is still MDV in human blood. The really interesting thing would be how it got there if exposure to chickens makes no difference.... ie office workers are just as likely to have it as chicken farmers and what is the mode of "infection" if that is the correct term when it is not actually an active "infection". Will it be the same as chickens in that it is inhaled in dander dust, in which case it seems odd that the incidence in farmers is not higher? Could it be ingested..... find that pretty hard to imagine but most people eat chicken and eggs of course, even though Marek's is not passed through eggs to chicks.... would be interesting to check life long vegans!

I do feel a little under qualified to take part in this discussion, so please correct me if I say something stupid.

As someone with Marek's disease in their flock it is somewhat comforting to find it's incidence in people handling chickens is no higher than office workers.

Someone mentioned that there is only a 1% chance of it crossing to humans..... considering how devastating the virus is, that 1% seems awfully high to me..... like much higher than winning the lottery. Am I misunderstanding that?